Plautus Bacchides and Menanders Play - Essay Example

Plautus’ Bacchides and Menander’s Play: A Comparative Analysis I. Introduction The comedies of Plautus focused mainly on the realities and activities of everyday life and ordinary citizens, apparently the interest of Greek New Comedy in contrast to the politically inclined Classical Age’s Old Comedy or the parodies of tragedy well-liked in the Middle Comedy of the post-classical period. However, Plautus creates comedy differently from the comedy of Menander. Commonly intense forms of characters set in bizarre circumstances, the characters of Plautus as a group evokes the makings of Aristophanes more than of Menander (McCarthy 2000). Definitely, unscrupulous prostitutes, deceitful flesh-peddlers, immoral young and old men, tormenting wives and suffering mothers and, especially, shrewd slaves who take pleasure in trickery dominate the plays of Plautus. On the other hand, this spread of expansive stock types is dissimilarity from the delicately crafted characters of Menander, and to some extent, the humor of Plautus winds back the progressing time and brings back the characters of Menander to the false impressions from which they emerged. In case, though, this is perceived as some kind of regression toward more ‘backward’ comedy, he accomplished it all with outstanding impact. The humor timing skill of Plautus, or precisely the extent of the delivery of humor or the unfolding of the scene, is unrivaled in the drama of the Western civilization, even by Shakespeare’s drama, all of which assumes an insightful awareness of the audience’s acumen, needs and the rationale they are present in the theatre (Walton & Arnott 1996). The objective, therefore, of this paper is to discuss the similarities and the differences between the characters in Plautus’s Bacchides and Menander’s characters. II. Characters of Bacchides and Menander: A Comparative Approach Much of the current literature on Bacchides has put emphasis on the organization of the play and on the omissions and exaggerations of the Plautine rendition of ‘Dis Exapaton’, which is an original of Menander, particularly studies conducted after the late 1960s, which is the time E.W. Handley publicized his comparative research of Bacchides and a section of the play of Menander. Apart from the pioneering research of E. Fantham on descriptions in Plautus and Terence, which involves studies of the Menandrian comedies of Plautus, no studies have been carried out which illustrate the Plautus’ application of descriptions in Bacchides as a primary foundation of a bond of humorous boldness between Chrysalus, servus callidus, and Bacchis I, meretrix callida (Mccarthy 2000). While different from the complete play, the portion of the ‘Dis Exapaton’, as it has been referred to, still shows fresh and key information on how Plautus resembled his Greek representations. Undeniably, for the very first time in the contemporary period, scholars can study a number of scenes and examine what Plautus was searching for when he created the characters of Bacchides. This enables scholars to evaluate to a certain extent whether or not his masterpiece was largely Roman or Greek. But the answer is midway, that is, it is and it is not (Wieand 1920). On one hand, Plautus is evidently adapting the plot of Menander, otherwise, how could it be known that an erratic, incoherent text stripped from the core of a Menandrean play represents a fragment of the Greek original within which Plautus adapted his Bacchides; yet the Roman is also advancing quite liberally about within the wide-ranging guidelines delineated by the plot of Menander. For example, simultaneous with that of the translation of Plautus of several of Menander’s discourse almost literally and even keeps the Greek name of one of the characters in Menander’s play, he also omits a couple of scenes which failed to fascinate him, two quite uninteresting, tête-à-têtes of father and son common of the ethical framework of Menander to comedy; in short, not humorous scene and, more essential to the stream of thoughts of Plautus, not even possible humorous scenes (Lever 1956). In totality, the Roman can be a free imitator or an accurate translator, as fits his style and form and way of thinking. Comparative examination of similar dialogues from the plays demonstrates well the character of Plautus’ flexible method of adaptation. In Bacchides, one of the characters, the young man Sostratos, has discovered what he believes is a hidden love affair between Chrysis, his lover, and Moschos, his best buddy. In an outburst of anger at their alleged unfaithfulness, he has given back to his father the cash Syros, their slave, conned from the aged man in order that Sostratos could offer it to Chrysis. But the detection of her supposed affair with Moschos has unnerved Sostratos tremendously and, being unaware of those he can trust, and hence whom to hold responsible, he talked to himself. There is a comparable soliloquy given by the counterpart of Sostratos in Plautus who changed the name to the character of Mnesilochus. The plot in the Roman play is, in addition, somewhat different. There is an instance in which Mnesilochus has not yet returned the cash fiddled by Chrysalus, his slave, the counterpart of Syros in Menander’s play, to his father. Generally, the ‘Dis Exapaton’ portion demonstrates that many had been long supposing, that the comedies of Plautus made for more dynamic, more comic and forceful humorous drama than their Greek counterparts, particularly Menander’s. Simultaneously, though, the Plautine plot is less convincing that its equivalent Menandrean context, with characters more embellished in their reactions to the theatre action and almost all commonly less sensible (Highet 1985). But it is significant to emphasize that this does not make the attempts of Plautus in Bacchides erroneous or in any way inferior creation than Menander’s, the manner intellectuals commonly perceive the condition a century ago. The two dramatists basically wrote from dissimilar viewpoints on life, for dissimilar kinds of theatre and, primarily, to a dissimilar group of audiences. Neither is inherently superior to the other; to a certain extent, both playwrights are very much appropriate to their own worlds. And it is fortunate for the world of literature that both are present in the development of Roman Comedy, for the reason that with the ingenuity of Menander at plot and character creation providing shape to the skill of comic timing and language of Plautus, the two make one supreme playwright, and undoubtedly, one of the excellent and most controversial couple of theatre teammates who never have met. Consequently, Plautus’ Bacchides could not always be considered a remarkable art, nor does it persevere at every point to enlighten or enhance the audience or promote the sophistication of theatre, but the comedies of Plautus are always interesting and entertaining. The truth is his comedies are still being performed with extraordinary success at present; they were among, including Bacchides, the first antique plays performed on theatre in the Renaissance, the advent of modernity (Mccarthy 2000). Bacchides attests to the talent of the Romans and the practical evaluation of what a common audience looks for in a comic drama, namely, humor and entertainment, flavored with perceptive observation of human existence. III. Conclusions The characters in Bacchides, as demonstrated in the discussion, are comparable with that of the characters in Menander’s plays. Therefore, differences between the characters of the two playwrights are quite tricky to discern. However, I propose that the resemblance of depictions used by Bacchis sisters and Chrysalus highlights a more profound concurrence of imagery between these second best characters, the prostitute and the slave, that are present within the proportioned organization of the drama. Examining the characterization of the opening and the ending scenes of the play is helpful in examining the differences and similarities between Bacchides and Menander’s play. However, it will suffice to know for a fact that Bacchides was probably an adaptation of ‘Dis Exapaton’ by Menander in order to assume that the characters of these two plays have more similarities than differences. References Highet, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Lever, Katherine. The Art of Greek Comedy. London: Methuen, 1956. Mccarthy, Kathleen. Slaves, Masters and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Norwood, Gilbert. Plautus and Terence . New York: Longmans, Green, 1932. Walton, J. Michael & Peter D. Arnott. Menander and the Making of Comedy. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996. Wieand, Helen E. Deception in Plautus: A Study in the Technique of Roman Comedy. Boston: R.G. Badger, 1920. Read More