Classical Comedy

A new anthology, bringing together four masterpieces of classical comedy in one volume.

Little is known about Aristophanes' life (c. 445BC-c.386BC), but there is a portrait of him in Plato's Symposium. His first comedy was produced when he was 20 and he wrote 40 plays in the course of his life. 
 
 
Erich Segal has taught Classics at Harvard, Yale and Princeton and is currently an Honorary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He has published widely on Greek and Roman Comedy, his latest book, The Death of Comedy, was published in 2001. He is also the author of nine best-selling novels.

From the fifth to the second century BC, innovative comedy drama flourished in Greece and Rome. This collection brings together the greatest works of Classical comedy, with two early Greek plays: Aristophanes' bold, imaginative Birds, and Menander's The Girl from Samos, which explores popular contemporary themes of mistaken identity and sexual misbehaviour; and two later Roman comic plays: Plautus' The Brothers Menaechmus - the original comedy of errors - and Terence's bawdy yet sophisticated double love-plot, The Eunuch. Together, these four plays demonstrate the development of Classical comedy, celebrating its richness, variety and extraordinary legacy to modern drama.

The Pot of Gold and Other Plays

A collection of witty and scathing plays giving insight in to the vagaries of Roman life

Titus Maccius Plautus was born in Umbria about 254BC. Little is known of his life, but it is believed he became an actor and translated Greek comedies for the Roman stage. He was rewarded by being granted Roman citizenship. According to Cicero he died in 184BC. 
 
 
EF Watling was educated at University College, Oxford. His translations for the Penguin Classics include seven plays of Sophocles, nine plays of Plautus and a selection of Seneca's tragedies. He died in 1990.

One of the supreme comic writers of the Roman world, Plautus (c.254-184 BC), skilfully adapted classic Greek comic models to the manners and customs of his day. This collection features a varied selection of his finest plays, from the light-hearted comedy Pseudolus, in which the lovesick Calidorus and his slave try to liberate his lover from her pimp, to the more subversive The Prisoners, which raises serious questions about the role of slavery. Also included are The Brothers Menaechmus, which formed the prototype for Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, and The Pot of Gold, whose old miser Euclio is a glorious study in avarice. Throughout, Plautus breathes new, brilliant life into classic comic types - including deceitful twins, scheming slaves, bitter old men and swaggering soldiers - creating an entertaining critique of Roman life and values.

Plautus

Brilliantly adapting Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, the sublime comedies of Plautus (c. 254 -184 bc ) are the earliest surviving complete works of Latin literature. The four plays collected here reveal a playwright in his prime, exploring classic themes and developing standard characters that were to influence the comedies of Shakespeare, Molière and many others. In The Ghost, a dissolute son who has squandered his father's money is thrown into disarray when he returns from abroad, a theme that is explored further in the comedy of errors A Three-Dollar Day. In The Rope - regarded by many as the best of Plautus' plays - the shipwreck of a pimp and his slaves leads to the touching reunion of a father and his daughter, while Amphitryo, Plautus's only excursion into divine mythology, offers a cheerful account of how Jupiter became father to Hercules.

Plautus

Books by Plautus

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