Titus Maccius Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus The Casket Comedy
Plautus' Casina is a lively and well composed farce. The plot, which concerns the competition of a father and his son for the same girl and the various scurrilous tricks employed in the process, gives full scope to Plautus' inventiveness and richly comic language. The editors' aim is to establish the play as one of the liveliest of ancient comedies, and in their introduction and notes to make the reader continually aware of the conditions of an actual stage performance. They discuss the background and conventions of Roman comedy and by offering a complete metrical analysis they help the reader to appreciate the original musical structure of the play. The edition is intended primarily for use by students at school and university but will be of value to anyone interested in reading the play in the original. Plautus and Terence used stock characters (the young lovers, the clever slave, the irate father) and devices (mistaken identity), but each handled these conventions in his own distinct manner.