Click here to download a slideshow from the 2008 production of Plautus’ Mostellaria. Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254-184 B.C.) wrote over 100 comedies, of which 20 survive. All are Latin adaptations of earlier Greek comedies. His source for the Mostellaria, whose title literally means. Maccius Plautus, Mostellaria, or The Haunted House Henry Thomas Riley, Ed. ('Agamemnon', 'Hom. 9.1', 'denarius') All Search Options view abbreviations Home Collections/Texts Perseus Catalog Research Grants Open Source About Help. Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to.
Plautus (Titus Maccius),born about 254 BCE at Sarsina in Umbria, wentto Rome, engaged in work connected with the stage, lost his money in commerce, thenturned to writing comedies.Twenty-one plays by Plautus havesurvived (one is incomplete). The basis of all is a free translation from comediesby such writers as Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon.
So we have Greek manners ofAthens about 300–250 BCE transferredto the Roman stage of about 225–185, with Greek places, people, andcustoms, for popular amusement in a Latin city whose own culture was not yetdeveloped and whose manners were more severe. To make his plays live for hisaudience, Plautus included many Roman details, especially concerning slavery,military affairs, and law, with some invention of his own, notably in management ofmetres. The resulting mixture is lively, genial and humorous, with good dialogue andvivid style.
There are plays of intrigue ( Two Bacchises, The Haunted House,Pseudolus); of intrigue with a recognition theme ( The Captives,The Carthaginian, Curculio); plays which develop character ( ThePot of Gold, Miles Gloriosus); others which turn on mistaken identity(accidental as in the Menaechmi; caused on purpose as inAmphitryon); plays of domestic life ( The Merchant,Casina, both unpleasant; Trinummus, Stichus, bothpleasant).The Loeb Classical Library edition of Plautus is infive volumes.
Plot SummaryLars Familiaris, the household deity of, an old man with a marriageable daughter, begins the play with a prologue about how he allowed Euclio to discover a pot of gold buried in his house. Euclio is then shown almost maniacally guarding his gold from real and imagined threats. Unknown to Euclio, Phaedria is pregnant by a young man named. Phaedria is never seen on stage, though at a key point in the play the audience hears her painful cries in labor.Euclio is persuaded to marry his daughter to his rich neighbor, an elderly bachelor named Megadorus, who happens to be the uncle of Lyconides. This leads to much by-play involving preparations for the nuptials. Drakensang english patch. Eventually Lyconides and his slave appear, and Lyconides confesses to Euclio his ravishing of Phaedria. Lyconides’ slave manages to steal the now notorious pot of.
Lyconides confronts his slave about the theft.At this point the manuscript breaks off. From surviving summaries of the, we know that Euclio eventually recovers his pot of gold and gives it to Lyconides and Phaedria, who marry in a happy ending. In the Penguin Classics edition of the play, translator E.F. Watling actually wrote the ending as it might have originally been constructed, based on the summaries and a few surviving scraps of dialogue. Other writers down through the centuries have also written endings for the play, with somewhat varying results (one version was produced by Antonio Urceo in the late 15th century, another by Martinus Dorpius in the early 16th century, etc.).Read more about this topic:Other articles related to ' plot summary'. Famous quotes containing the words summary and/or plot:“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism.
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With the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known. ”— (18561924).