Plautus

Plautus (c. 254-184 bc), Roman comic dramatist, who enjoyed immense popularity among the Romans and greatly influenced post-Renaissance European dramatic literature.

Plautus was born in Sarsina, Umbria. According to legend he went to Rome as a youth, made money doing backstage work, lost it in business, and began to write comedies while employed in a mill. More than 100 comedies were ascribed to him, but of these only 20 and the very fragmentary Vidularia have been preserved; almost all were composed in the last 20 years of his life. The extant comedies of Plautus are all plays with costumes, characters, plots, and settings modelled upon original comedies written by Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, and other playwrights of the Greek New Comedy. Plautus added numerous local allusions, introduced the elements of song and dance (dialogue occupied only about one-third of each play), and, with his broad sense of humour and his mastery of colloquial Latin, produced farces that, although less polished, were often more amusing than the plays of the Greek New Comedy. The plots were usually based upon love affairs, with complications arising from deception or mistaken identity, and the characters were the standard types inherited from Greek comedies, such as parasites and braggart warriors. The comedies of Plautus, however, display variety and inventiveness in the treatment of both theme and character, and range from mythological parody (Amphitruo) to romance (Rudens), and from burlesque (Casina) and farce (Menaechmi) to refined comedy (Captivi and Trinummus).