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For eight centuries after his death Menander was the third most popular poet in the Greek-speaking world, and his plays, through Roman imitations and adaptations, engendered a tradition of European light drama that extends to our own day. But it is only since 1844 that some of the actual texts of Menander's plays have been rediscovered, mostly in Egyptian papyri. Two of these have given us four-fifths of the script of Samia (The Woman from Samos), a play of deception and misunderstanding in which a marriage that everyone desires almost fails to happen, two women and a baby are almost ruined, and a loving father almost loses his only son, because the people at home and the people abroad have both been doing things behind each other's backs - but somehow everything ends happily after all. This is the first full-scale edition with English commentary and is suitable for upper-level students.
For eight centuries after his death Menander was the third most popular poet in the Greek-speaking world, and his plays, through Roman imitations and adaptations, engendered a tradition of European light drama that extends to our own day. But it is only since 1844 that some of the actual texts of Menander's plays have been rediscovered, mostly in Egyptian papyri. Two of these have given us four-fifths of the script of Samia (The Woman from Samos), a play of deception and misunderstanding in which a marriage that everyone desires almost fails to happen, two women and a baby are almost ruined, and a loving father almost loses his only son, because the people at home and the people abroad have both been doing things behind each other's backs - but somehow everything ends happily after all. This is the first full-scale edition with English commentary and is suitable for upper-level students.
Euripides' Cyclops is the only example of Attic satyr-drama which survives intact. It is a brilliant dramatisation of the famous story from Homer's Odyssey of how Odysseus blinded the Cyclops after making him drunk. The play has much to teach us, not just about satyr-drama, but also about the reception and adaptation of Homer in classical Athens; the brutal savagery of the Homeric monster is here replaced by an ironised presentation of Athenian social custom. Problems of syntax, metre and language are fully explained, and there is a sophisticated literary discussion of the play. This edition will be of interest to advanced undergraduates and graduate students studying Greek literature, as well as to scholars.
Euripides' Cyclops is the only example of Attic satyr-drama which survives intact. It is a brilliant dramatisation of the famous story from Homer's Odyssey of how Odysseus blinded the Cyclops after making him drunk. The play has much to teach us, not just about satyr-drama, but also about the reception and adaptation of Homer in classical Athens; the brutal savagery of the Homeric monster is here replaced by an ironised presentation of Athenian social custom. Problems of syntax, metre and language are fully explained, and there is a sophisticated literary discussion of the play. This edition will be of interest to advanced undergraduates and graduate students studying Greek literature, as well as to scholars.
Pseudolus of all Plautus' comedies most fully reveals its author's metapoetics. As its eponymous clever slave telegraphs his every move to spectators, Pseudolus highlights the aesthetic, social, and performative priorities of Plautine comedy: brilliant linguistic play, creative appropriation of comic tradition, interrogation of convention and social norms, the projection of an air of improvisation and a fresh comic universe, and exploration of dramatic mimesis itself. The extensive Introduction analyses Plautus' delightful comedy as a stage-performance, the comic playwright's translation and adaptation practices, his innovative deployment of language and metrical and musical virtuosity, as well as the play's transmission and reception. In addition to detailed elucidation of the Latin text, the Commentary examines Pseudolus as a lens into Roman slave society at the time of its debut at the Megalensian festival of 191 BCE. The edition engages throughout with current criticism and issues of interest to both students and scholars.
Pseudolus of all Plautus' comedies most fully reveals its author's metapoetics. As its eponymous clever slave telegraphs his every move to spectators, Pseudolus highlights the aesthetic, social, and performative priorities of Plautine comedy: brilliant linguistic play, creative appropriation of comic tradition, interrogation of convention and social norms, the projection of an air of improvisation and a fresh comic universe, and exploration of dramatic mimesis itself. The extensive Introduction analyses Plautus' delightful comedy as a stage-performance, the comic playwright's translation and adaptation practices, his innovative deployment of language and metrical and musical virtuosity, as well as the play's transmission and reception. In addition to detailed elucidation of the Latin text, the Commentary examines Pseudolus as a lens into Roman slave society at the time of its debut at the Megalensian festival of 191 BCE. The edition engages throughout with current criticism and issues of interest to both students and scholars.
Terence's Hecyra raises social, literary and theatrical issues of great interest to modern students of Roman comedy and, indeed, of Roman culture more broadly. The play pays strikingly close attention to the domestic problems of women and experiments boldly with traditional comic forms, not only in its creation of anticipatory suspense, but through its variations on traditional situations and roles and its metatheatrical qualities. In addition, Terence's response in his prologues to the play's two putative failures is important, if tendentious, evidence for the mechanics of theatrical performance in the second century, especially the conjunction of theatrical and gladiatorial shows. This edition opens the play's many interpretive challenges to wider scrutiny while remaining attentive to the linguistic needs of students at all levels.
Terence's Hecyra raises social, literary and theatrical issues of great interest to modern students of Roman comedy and, indeed, of Roman culture more broadly. The play pays strikingly close attention to the domestic problems of women and experiments boldly with traditional comic forms, not only in its creation of anticipatory suspense, but through its variations on traditional situations and roles and its metatheatrical qualities. In addition, Terence's response in his prologues to the play's two putative failures is important, if tendentious, evidence for the mechanics of theatrical performance in the second century, especially the conjunction of theatrical and gladiatorial shows. This edition opens the play's many interpretive challenges to wider scrutiny while remaining attentive to the linguistic needs of students at all levels.
