012 2000-Years-Old But Feeling 60: Plautus’ The Brothers Menaechmus

You know how you were forced to read Shakespeare in school? Shakespeare was forced to read Plautus. Any Renaissance writer worth his salt riffed on this Roman Republican comedian. Shakespeare liked this play so much he based The Comedy of Errors on it.

 

It’s a classic tale of long-separated twins getting mistaken for each other.

 

Has this 2000-year-old comedy aged well? Get ready for mistaken identity, hedonism, the art of translation, 1960s-style sexism, ancient-style slavery and – above all – brotherly love.

 

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Sources

Plautus, Four Comedies, trans. Erich Segal (the guy who wrote Love Story – you know, the movie your grandfather sort of remembers – ‘love means never having to say your sorry’, that one.), Oxford University Press

Plautus, Menaechmi, or The Twin Brothers, edited by Henry Thomas Riley, Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=pl.+men.+1

The Encyclopedia Britannica, Plautus (Roman dramatist), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Plautus