CONTAMINATIO AND ADAPTATION: THE MODERN

RECEPTION OF ANCIENT DRAMA AS AN AID TO

UNDERSTANDING ROMAN COMEDY

LISA MAURICE

The last few decades have seen an explosion in the number of performances of ancient drama and in
the way that these performances are viewed by classical scholars, those involved in the theatre and the
wider public. This explosion has in itself led to the development of the relatively new field of reception
studies, through which new perspectives have been cast not only upon the ancient texts themselves but
also upon the impact of these texts on modern society. In this paper I would like to examine the
changing attitudes to the staging of ancient drama and in particular highlight a new trend of creative
adaptation, which, I suggest, is similar to the methods used by Plautus in writing his plays. I will
conclude with some ideas as to what this comparison might tell us, in an attempt to apply reception
studies back to the ancient world, in a way that may help us understand more deeply the role drama
played in ancient Greek and Roman societies.

I Attitudes towards staging ancient drama

1. Stage one: accuracy and authenticity as criteria of worth

One of the earliest approaches to modern performances of ancient themes and texts was to judge them
according to their authenticity and their loyalty to the classical world and ancient staging practices.
Thus, early British productions of Greek tragedy, such as the 1845 version of Sophocles’ Antigone,
aimed for authenticity. As a result Greek tragedy quickly became a popular subject for burlesque. Its
earnest faithfulness to the original was parodied. 1 In the United States a parallel emphasis upon
authenticity can be seen, as for example in the 1881 production of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus,
performed in the original Greek. The costumes for the production were declared authentic to fifth
century Athens,2 while other productions featured sets that were carefully designed to resemble an
ancient Greek theatre.3 This attitude can also be seen in the productions of Greek Plays at Bradfield
College and Cambridge. Since 1882, these plays have been are performed in the original language.
Their goal was to strive for accuracy and to reproduce the atmosphere of the original setting and
performance as closely as possible. That this was still an important criterion as recently as the mid
1990’s is demonstrated by an article on the Cambridge Greek Play of 1995:

No production in translation, however, can access the direct emotional power of the
original theatrical experience. Greek plays are written in verse, and, moreover, are
centred around their ritual origin in the chorus. The choric passages in a Greek play
are no banal interlude to the drama, but its essential dynamic, as the group celebrates,
bemoans, and comments on the individual protagonists’ actions, driving the story
forward through their singing and dancing. The felt power of the group versus the
individual, the Dionysiac joy and terror conveyed by rhythm and sound, is denied to
the audience in translation: it is as if one was hearing a vast orchestral piece played
on an untuned piano. The remit of the Cambridge Greek Play is, then, to unlock the
poetry coiled up in the original text, ‘the twisting music of that language that is itself
a work of art’ (Kenneth Rexroth). For both audience and actors the result is a pure
and direct encounter with the sensuous and emotional aspects of the drama -- its true
theatrical nature.4

As the practice of reviving Greek tragedy developed in the early years of the twentieth
century, attempts were made to highlight plays and themes that resonated in the minds of their

1
E. Hall, ‘Greek tragedy and the British stage, 1566-1997’, in Productions of ancient Greek drama in Europe, ed. P.
Mavromoustakos (Athens 1999) 60 and ‘1845 and all that: singing Greek tragedy on the London stage’, in The use and abuses of
antiquity, ed. M. Biddiss and M. Wyke (London 1998).
2
K. Hartigan, Greek tragedy on the American stage (Connecticut 1995) 7.
3
For information on Antigone (1845) and Oedipus (1882) see Hartigan, Greek tragedy (n. 2, above) 9-11.
4
D. Hood, ‘Transcending the barriers - The Cambridge Greek play’, Didaskalia 1.5 (1994):
www.didaskalia.net/issues/vol1no5/dictynna.html (accessed 26/02/2009).
contemporary audiences. From Gilbert Murray’s pre-first world war versions onwards, Greek tragedy
began to be staged in ways that emphasised the political and social relevance of its themes. Thus the
Medea was performed against the backdrop of the suffragette movement, 5 and the Trojan Women
against that of the Treaty of Versailles. 6 In America too, the Trojan Women was repeatedly staged as a
pacifist manifesto between 1915 and 1935.7 Even as Greek tragedies were adapted, however, placing
the emphasis on those elements of the dramas that enhanced their relevance to modern audiences, they
still attempted to remain faithful to the original texts. Their producers believed themselves to be
faithful to the true and original spirit of the plays. It was by this criterion that staging Greek tragedy
was justified and judged. Indeed, Karolos Koun, whose European productions of the 1960’s adapted
tragedy to highlight its political and social resonance for contemporary audiences by looking at modern
Greece through the prism of the ancient stated that:

The issue of the interpretation of the works of a great writer depends upon how much
you are going to respect the essence, the spirit, the poetry and the magic of the work,
in conjunction always with the means at your disposal and the manner which best
suits a specific production, so that this interpretation helps the public of a certain
place [and time] to communicate more fully with the work.

He wanted to ensure that he never betrayed the ancient form of Greek drama. He believed that as a
native Greek, he was closer to and was able to recognise the essential nature of the drama he was
producing. ‘It is easy enough,’ he declared:

to be led astray by superficial pyrotechnics, which are alien and opposed to the
reality of the country and to the content and form of tragedy. It is equally easy to
allow the work to unfold in a climate of dullness, with a rhetorical delivery of the
words and only the words, accompanied by schematic and conventional movement,
again alien and opposed to the Dionysiac and ritual form of ancient theatre. 8

Being ‘true’ to ancient tragedy was, therefore, the raison d’etre of many modern productions. At the
same time relevance to the modern world was emphasised.
A similar trend can be observed in the criticism of the portrayal of the ancient world in film.
Historical films in general have engendered a sense of unease in academics, who have traditionally
been concerned with the question of accuracy. Thus, the historian Louis Gottschalk as early as 1935
complained to Samuel Marx, Story-Editor, of MGM Studios, that cinema owed it to its patrons to be
more accurate and urged him to use reputable historians to ensure that portrayals of historical events
were factually correct.9 Authenticity was again the criterion by which the value of such productions
was judged.

2. Stage two: modern contaminatio, a new trend

Despite this early stress on ‘authenticity’, in recent years a new trend has emerged, whereby ancient
texts are adapted, manipulated and transformed in order to produce new productions that have an
impact on contemporary society. Despite the vibrancy of these new plays, they still face criticism from
purists. Herbert Golder, for example, strongly criticised modern productions for being out of step with
their roots and therefore unfaithful to the spirit of classical Greece. He rejected the attempts to employ
alternative traditions, such as Noh drama, in staging Greek tragedy. 10 Despite such criticism the trend
has gathered momentum. Ancient plays are reinterpreted, set in different locations or periods, cast
inventively, rewritten or even combined to create new works and this is on the whole regarded as a
positive development. Steven Berkoff’s Greek was an early example of this a trend. It is modelled on a
range of ancient plays (Aeschylus, Agamemnon, Sophocles, Oedipus Tyranus, Oedipus at Colonus and

5
E. Hall, ‘Medea and British legislation before the First World War: Medea the suffragette’, Greece and Rome 46 (1999) 42-77.
6
Hall, Greek tragedy and the British stage (n. 1, above) 63.
7
Hartigan, Greek tragedy (n. 2, above) 15-19.
8
Karolos Koun on Greek tragedy: http://www.theatrotechnis.gr/$greek%20art%20th.files/$greek_tragedy.html (accessed
05/07/2008).
9
Letter from Louis Gottschalk, President of the University of Chicago, to Marx dated 18 April 1935, quoted and discussed in D.
J. Sylvester, ‘Myth in restorative justice history’, Utah Law Review 471 (2003) 1445-96: http://ssrn.com/abstract=886201
(accessed 03/03/2009).
10
H. Golder, ‘Geek tragedy? - Or why I’d rather go to the movies’, Arion 4.1 (1996) 174-209.
the other Theban plays). It was performed to acclaim on several occasions throughout the 1980’s.
Berkoff himself wrote about this play:

Greek was my love poem to the spirit of Oedipus over the centuries. I ransacked the
entire legend. So this is not simply an adaptation of Sophocles but a recreation of the
various Oedipus myths which seemed to apply.11 

This idea of ‘ransacking’ ancient texts in order to produce new dramatic recreations has
gained ground over the last few years. Greek tragedy in particular has proved a particularly fertile
source of inspiration for playwrights in countries plagued by conflict. In this vein a recent volume
considers the staging of tragedy in Ireland, citing plays by a range of modern playwrights, 12 who have
translated and adapted Greek tragedies to emphasise messages that resonate in the political context of
Ireland.13 Many of these plays are more than literal translations. They draw on other sources to expand
the range of their message and to create a powerful multi-layered atmosphere with which the audience
can identify. In particular there has been a spate of productions of Antigone, four in 1984 alone, all
written within the space of a few months: Brendan Kennelly’s Antigone, Aidan Carl Mathew’s Anti-
gone, Tom Paulin’s The Riot Act and Pat Murphy’s movie Ann Devlin.14 Each of these utilised the
ancient myth to comment on contemporary events in Ireland. It did so by altering the source texts in
order to facilitate this agenda. Kennelly's and Murphy’s versions are more concerned with women’s
rights, namely the contemporary debate and legislation on divorce and abortion. Matthews’ Anti-gone
dealt with the curtailing of civil liberties, in light of the Criminal Justice Bill that was then being
debated. Paulin’s version was perhaps the most political, using the play as an attack on Unionism. His
Creon, for example, echoes the rhetoric of Ian Paisley and uses the phrases and gestures of modern
Irish, British and American politicians in his speeches.
In a similar vein, South Africa has produced its own versions of plays inspired by Greek
tragedy.15 Athol Fugard’s Antigone-based drama, The Island depictss prisoners jailed on Robben Island
under the abusive apartheid laws, metatheatrically performing scenes from Antigone in protest against
the regime under which they live. The Song of Jacob Zulu by Tug Yourgrau forms a parallel with the
Orestes myth, in which, as William Dominick points out: ‘the trial of a young man becomes the
backdrop against which a human legal system can emerge from a destructive cycle of blood violence
and vengeance’.16 Mervyn McMurtry’s Electra staged at the University of Natal Durban in 2000 was
adapted from translations of Sophocles’ Electra and combined with additional material from
Aeschylus’ and Euripides’ versions of the same myth. In addition, the choral odes were rewritten and
modelled not only on Greek drama but also on testimonies by victims of atrocities from Bosnia and
from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The prologue was declaimed by a
forensic pathologist who explained the murder of the blanket-covered corpse on the mortuary trolley
next to her. The characters of the play appeared in chains clustered on a stage scattered with sand and
marked off by hazard tape. Scenes from modern war zones played on a screen and a guard in modern
dress, armed with a rifle, supervised the prisoners. The production was most definitely McMurtry’s
Electra rather than Sophocles’, a new creation in its own right.
Jay Scheib took a similar approach when he wrote his version of The Medea (2004). He
explained:

The structure and language of the play collide classical verse with fragmented prose.
I have used Heiner Müller’s apocalyptic tryptic: Despoiled Shore, Medeamaterial
and Landscape with Argonauts as a frame for the texts of Euripides, Seneca, and
Franz Grillparzer. The play makes several nods to the films of Passolini, Carl

11
S. Berkoff, The theatre of Steven Berkoff (London 1992) 139.
12
For example Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, Marina Carr, Frank McGuiness, Brendan Kennelly, Tom Paulin and Pat Kinevane.
13
M. McDonald, J. M. Walton, Amid our troubles. Irish versions of Greek tragedy (London 2002).
14
For a discussion of this phenomenon in general and a close examination of these plays see A. Roche, ‘Ireland’s Antigones:
tragedy north and south’, in Cultural contexts and literary idioms in contemporary Irish literature, ed. M. Kenneally (Gerrards
Cross 1988) 249-50 and C. Murray, ‘Three Irish Antigones’, in Perspectives of Irish drama and theatre, ed. J. Genet and R. A.
Cave (Gerrards Cross 1991) 115-29.
15
W. Dominik, ‘Africa’, in A companion to the classical tradition, ed. C. Kallendorf (Oxford 2007) 117-26. See also L.
Hardwick and C. Gillespie (eds), Classics in post-colonial worlds (Oxford 2007).
16
Dominik, Africa (n. 15, above) 121.
 Dreyer’s unfinished manuscript, Lars Von Trier’s Nordic experiment, and
Cherubini’s opera.17

Taking inspiration from the modern detective novel, he reversed the order of events, so that Medea's
children are killed at the beginning of the play and the climax is Jason’s abandonment of his wife.
There are metatheatrical touches in this production, too. It featued microphones, video cameras and
television sets. Once again the end result is an original dramatic production rather than a revival.
Even in conflict-free areas, tragedy has been used to explore important social issues.
Feminism in particular has informed many modern productions based on Greek tragedies. Edith Hall
has commented on this trend, highlighting the centrality of relationships between women and figures
other than a husband or lover in Greek tragedy. This aspect makes these plays ideally suited for putting
forward a feminist agenda that also wishes to emphasise the female as something other than a wife. 18
The USA saw a production entitled The hungry woman. A Mexican Medea in which the eponymous
heroine, who in this case is a lesbian Chicana, is imprisoned in a mental hospital, to which she was
admitted after murdering her son. This play draws on the Medea myth, but alters and updates it, in
order to highlight the theme of feminism and sexual orientation. 19 Another version of the Medea,
Rhodessa Jones’ The Medea Project (1992), intertwines the stories of convicted female prisoners with
that of Medea herself.20 Other tragic productions utilise the myths of the house of Atreus and in
particular add elements from the myth of Iphigenia to that of the Oresteia in order to present
Clytemnestra in a more sympathetic light. They presented their audiences with a more positive female
version of the Argive queen. 21 A similar approach was taken in the play Bad Women. Elements from
different tragedies and myths were combined in order to explore contemporary female roles. Helene
Foley described the production as:

an explicitly metatheatrical piece in which two actors and four actresses, playing
Clytemnestra, Phaedra, Medea, Agave, Deinara and Cassandra performed certain
diverging or intersecting aspects and high points of their roles before a chorus of
gossiping teenage girls in modern dress holding cell phones.22

All of these modern adaptations are far more than mere translations. They utilise a range of texts
and sources to create a performance that remains recognizable as classical in origin, but one that is also
a radically new interpretation of the story. The ideology behind this new trend is clearly demonstrated
in Charles Mee’s ‘The (re)making project’. 23 This is an internet database of classical texts and new
works modelled on them as well as from other sources. The aim of the project is to facilitate the
creation of yet more new receptions. The user is strongly encouraged to join in this process:

Please feel free to take the plays from this website and use them freely as a resource for
your own work: that is to say, don’t just make some cuts or rewrite a few passages or
re-arrange them or put in a few texts that you like better, but pillage the plays as I have
pillaged the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out
of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet, and build your own,
entirely new, piece--and then, please, put your own name to the work that results.24

Mee’s words are echoed by the mission statement of the Creative Archive Licence Group, through
which a range of organisations including the BBC, the BFI, Channel 4 and the Open University make
their content available for download. This enables them to ‘share, watch, listen and re-use this content

17
J. Scheib at www.jayscheib.com/medea/pressmaterials/info_photokey.doc (accessed 3/3/2009).
18
E. Hall, ‘Introduction: why Greek tragedy in the late twentieth century’, in Dionysus since ’69, ed. E. Hall, F. Macintosh and
A. Wrigley (Oxford 2004) 37.
19
S. Wilmer, ‘Women in Greek tragedy today: a reappraisal’, Theatre Research International, 32 (2007) 112-13.
20
For an in-depth study of this production see C. M. Cole, Imagining Medea. Rhodessa Jones and theater for incarcerated
women (Chapel Hill 2001).
21
Examples include Katie Mitchell’s 2000 production of the Oresteia, Triche Kehoe’s Children of Clytemnestra presented at the
Edinburgh festival in the same year, Clyt at Home. The Clytemnestra Project and All Clytemnestra on the Western Front: a
techno-feminist reconstruction of The Iliad, both from 2001, Charles Mee's Iphigenia 2.0 (2007) and Avra Sidiropoulou’s
Clytemnestra’s Tears (2007).
22
H. Foley, ‘Bad women’, in Hall et all Dionysus (n. 18, above) 78.
23
Reviewed in Didaskalia 6.2: www.didaskalia.net/issues/vol6no2/donegan.htm (accessed 24/03/2009).
24
http://charlesmee.com/html/about.html (accessed 8/3/2009).
as a fuel for [their] own creative endeavours’.25 Here is the legitimisation of the principle that
plundering texts and sources in order to create new productions is acceptable and perhaps even
something to be encouraged. What is new and exciting about this approach is the idea that using Greek
drama as a foundation upon which to build and as a source of plunderable material, is a valid and
worthwhile form of creation and one that can produce exciting results.

II The context of modern adaptations: post-modern theatre

In order to follow the development from performances of ancient drama informed by the principle of
authenticity to the innovative new style characterised by the combination of disparate elements outlined
above, it is necessary to consider the wider context of twentieth century post-modern theatre. 26 One
feature of this style of drama is that different kinds of texts and indeed different media are frequently
combined. Postmodern theatre regards all history and culture as a store of signs that may be utilised as
source material. Thus, cultural dramatic traditions from all over the world and from different periods in
history may be transplanted and merged together to create a new performance. Their acting style,
costumes, production design, music and other elements are taken from different contexts. 
One result of this combination of such varied texts and sources is that they can be used to
comment on each other, thus producing metatheatrical effects. Techniques such as the breaking of the
fourth wall, broken non-linear narrative, subversion of character portrayal, self-conscious approach to
the audience and improvisation characterise this kind of theatre. Playwrights can thus explore the limits
and boundaries of theatrical conventions. Examples of metatheatrical, post-modern theatre take a
variety of forms and range from the pure farce of plays such as Michael Frayn’s Noises off to the
sophistication of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Alan Ayckbourn’s
experiments with theatrical styles while working within mainstream comedy have been notable in this
field. His House & Garden, for example, consists of two plays performed simultaneously in two
adjacent theatrical spaces, one a proscenium and the other a theatre in the round. These plays,
according to one article, appropriate elements from ‘traditions as various as Greek satyr plays and
nineteenth-century drama, and from venues as disparate as the carnival square and the drawing room’. 27
Plays such a these, with their pastiche of styles and traditions, demand a high level of theatrical
awareness from the audience. This is characteristic of post-modern theatre and they provide the context
within which the modern productions of classical drama mentioned above should be discussed.
In the case of the adaptation of classical texts the issue is brought into even sharper focus,
because translation into another language is necessary. As Lorna Hardwick has argued sensitivity to the
processes of translation has greatly increased in recent years. It is now recognised that translation is not
necessarily a second-rate copy of an original work, but may be a work of art in its own right. 28 This
changing attitude arises from the proliferation of these modern adaptations which has in turn helped to
foster a vibrant and exciting atmosphere in which they can flourish.
In the wake of post-modernist theatre as well as in conjunction with it modern scholarship has
developed in new directions. Translation theory, reception studies and performance studies demonstrate
a new sensitivity to and awareness of these issues. These developments have led to a gradual change in
the attitudes of academics towards performances of classical drama and of movies set in the ancient
world. Early scholarly reactions to the movie, Gladiator, were mainly concerned with the accuracy of
its portrayal of Imperial Rome.29 Martin Winkler’s volume exploring the movie from an academic
perspective reflects this concern.30 Kathleen M. Coleman, who was the historical consultant on the film,
found that her advice was often not headed. She therefore asked not to be mentioned in the credits. She
described the difficulties of acting as a historical consultant. While admitting that ‘a feature film is not
a documentary’, she nevertheless felt frustrated by the presence of historical inaccuracies in the film. 31
Allen Ward expressed his disapproval in stronger terms:

25
http://www.bbc.co.uk/creativearchive/archives/what_is_the_creative_archive/project_faqs/index.html (accessed 18/6/2008).
26
For discussion of the development and characteristics of post-modern theatre, see e.g J. DiGaetani, The search for
postmodernism. Interviews with contemporary playwrights (New York 1991) and H.-T. Lehmann, Postdramatic theatre, trans.
K. Jurs-Munby (London 2006).
27
S. Tucker, ‘A diptych of comedy and carnival: Alan Ayckbourn’s House & Garden’, New Theatre Quarterly 22 (2006) 155-
80.
28
L. Hardwick, Translating words, translating cultures (London 2000) 9-22.
29
For example see: www.qwipster.net/gladiator.htm (accessed 08/03/2009).
30
M. M. Winkler (ed.), Gladiator, film and history (Oxford 2004).
31
K. M. Coleman, ‘The pedant goes to Hollywood’, in Winkler, Gladiator (n. 30, above) 45-52.
 Unfortunately, the creative minds who do the most to shape popular views of the past
often have little regard for the level of accuracy that preoccupies professional
practitioners of Clio’s craft. Artists and writers mine the past for raw materials that
support their own creative agenda. Few writers other than the most scrupulous of
historical novelists will ever let the facts that concern professional historians get
between them and paying customers.32

Martin Winkler, however, argued that while historical authenticity was clearly a subordinate concern in
the film, the aim of a historical film is to recreate a sense of the period and to bring it to life. Quoting
director Anthony Mann’s statement that ‘the most important thing is that you get the feeling of history’,
Winkler declared: ‘That is the only standard by which to measure a historical film’s level of
achievement’.33
Only three years later, the position of scholars involved with cinematic receptions had
changed dramatically. While some critics still condemned the film Troy for its inaccuracies,34 many
scholars supported the validity of Petersen’s adaptation. The companion volume to Troy is interspersed
with discussions of how far it is acceptable to adapt ancient sources and with justifying the changes
made.35 Georg Danek cites examples of the alterations made to the Homeric story in the classical
period by Dictys and Dares and uses this as a model in support of the changes made by the modern
scriptwriter.36 Other scholars point out that modern filmmakers were in fact engaged in a practice very
similar to the one Homer himself engaged in by taking a range of earlier sources and producing from
this his masterful epic.37 Throughout the volume, the validity of the practice of creating a new work
based on classical literature is emphasised. Martin Winkler writes: ‘Creative or artistic engagement
with a text, however, is not scholarship, and adaptations of classical literature do not have to conform
to the strictures of philology’. 38 Similarly, J. Lesley Fitton argues:

In fact, the creative art of filmmaking took precedence over the creative art of
archeological reconstruction. And rightly so. After all, the filmmakers’ aim was not
to create an academic or didactic document but a dramatically satisfying film for
large audiences worldwide. The two things are quite different. 39

Commenting on practice of viewing films such as Troy on the principle of accuracy, Jon Solomon
forcefully and repeatedly declares: ‘This is no way to watch a movie’. 40 Stephen Scully demands in a
similar vein:

Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy is no Iliad but why should it be? Virgil’s Aeneid is no
Iliad and James Joyce’s Ulysses no Odyssey. Nor should they be. Petersen’s primary
task is not fidelity to an ancient text but to tell, as Homer does, a rousing good
story.41

All these statements and the others that comprise this volume, emphasise the validity of viewing new
adaptations as works of art in their own right. They strongly support the practice of altering the
classical original. While classicists might not always agree with the specific changes made, the right of
the adapter to make those changes is strongly defended in such scholarly writing. This development is
surely due to an increased sensitivity to the processes of adaptation and translation. This allows for the
serious and thoughtful assessment of new works modelled on ancient texts and performances.

III Scholarly perspectives on Roman comedy

1. Plautus and contaminatio

32
A. M. Ward, ‘Gladiator in historical perspective’, in Winkler, Gladiator (n. 30, above) 31.
33
M. M. Winkler, ‘Gladiator and the traditions of historical cinema’, in Winkler, Gladiator (n. 30, above) 23.
34
See e.g. D. Mendelsohn, ‘A Little Iliad’, The New York Review of Books, vol. 52, no. 11 (24 June 2004) 46-49.
35
M. Winkler (ed.), Troy. From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood epic (Oxford 2007).
36
G. Danek, ‘The story of Troy through the centuries’, in Winkler, Troy (n. 35, above) 68-84.
37
For example: K. Shahabudin, ‘From Greek myth to Hollywood story: explanatory narrative in Troy’, in Winkler, Troy (n.35,
above) 107-18.
38
M. Winkler, ‘The Iliad and cinema’, in Winkler, Troy (n. 35, above) 44.
39
J. L. Fitton, ‘Troy and the role of the historical advisor’, in Winkler, Troy (n. 35, above) 98-99.
40
J. Solomon, ‘Viewing Troy: authenticity, criticism, interpretation’, in Winkler, Troy (n. 35, above) 85-98.
41
S. Scully, ‘The fate of Troy’, in Winkler, Troy (n. 35, above) 119.
The post-modernist creation of drama from multiple sources at first glance appears to be a new practice
and yet this method, too, has its roots in the ancient world. It resembles the way in which Roman
comedies were created in the third century BCE. The only complete plays we have from this time are
twenty one comedies created by Plautus and six by Terence. Both these dramatists constructed their
comedies by plundering Greek plays. While it is not clear exactly how Plautus translated and adapted
his sources, it is certain that he did use these Greek models as the basis for his plays, because on
several occasions he stated this explicitly. Thus, for example, in the prologue to the Casina he declares:

Comoediai nomen dare uobis uolo.

Clerumenoe uocatur haec comoedia
Graece, latine Sortientes. Deiphilus
Hanc graece scripsit, post id rursum denuo
Latine Plautus cum latranti nomine.

I want to give you the name of the comedy. This comedy is called Cleumenoe in
Greek, in Latin, Sortientes. Deiphilus wrote it in Greek, afterwards Plautus - he of
the barking name - wrote it again in Latin.
(Casina 32-35)

In the Trinummus he famously explains:

huic Graece nomen est Thensauro fabulae:

Philemo scripsit, Plautus vertit barbare,
nomen Trinummo fecit, nunc hoc vos rogat            
ut liceat possidere hanc nomen fabulam.

The name of this play in Greek is Thensaurus. Philemon wrote it, Plautus turned it
into a foreign tongue, gave it the name ‘Trinummus’, and now asks this of you, that
the play be permitted to keep this name.
(Trinummus 18-21)42

More evidence as to Plautus’s creative process is provided by Terence, writing a generation after
Plautus. In Terence’s prologues he defends himself against criticism of his writing methods:

Menander fecit Andriam et Perinthiam.

qui utramvis recte norit ambas noverit:              
non ita dissimili sunt argumento, [s]et tamen
dissimili oratione sunt factae ac stilo.
quae convenere in Andriam ex Perinthia
fatetur transtulisse atque usum pro suis.
id isti vituperant factum atque in eo disputant      
contaminari non decere fabulas.
faciuntne intellegendo ut nil intellegant?
qui quom hunc accusant, Naevium Plautum Ennium
accusant quos hic noster auctores habet,
quorum aemulari exoptat neglegentiam               
potius quam istorum obscuram diligentiam.

Menander made an Andria and a Perinthia. Whoever knows either of them well,
knows both of them: for they are no different in plot, although different in language
and style. He admits that he has transferred those things that were suitable from the
Perinthia to the Andria and used them for his own ends. They denigrate him for
having done this, and argue that he should not have mixed the plays up in this way.
Do they not show by this understanding that they understand nothing at all? When
they accuse him, they accuse Naevius, Plautus and Ennius, whom our poet has as
42
In total, the Greek originals of eight of Plautus’ extant comedies are known, either because they are named in the Roman text
or because they can be inferred from quotations in other literature. Four of these plays (Aulularia, Bacchides, Cistellaria,
Stichus) are based on Menander, two (Casina, Rudens) on Diphilus, and two (Mercator, Trinummus) on Philemon.
 precedents, whose carelessness he would rather imitate that the dreary pedantry of
these writers.
(Andria 9-21)

What Terence is accused of here is taking parts from one play and transposing them into another. The
‘fault’ that is called by modern scholars contaminatio. Thus, Menander wrote two different plays with
similar plots and Terence has taken parts from both to create his new version of the Andria. He also
refers to the neglegentia that he believes characterises the previous generation of dramatists, Naevius,
Plautus and Ennius, contrasting it favourably with the obscura diligentia of his own contemporaries
and taking the earlier poets as his models.
Similar lines in the Heauton Timorumenos repeat the accusation levelled by Terence’s critics:

ex integra Graeca integram comoediam

hodie sum acturus H[e]auton timorumenon,          
duplex quae ex argumento facta est simplici...

nam quod rumores distulerunt malevoli

multas contaminasse Graecas, dum facit
paucas Latinas: factum id esse hic non negat
neque se pigere et deinde facturum autumat.
habet bonorum exemplum quo exemplo sibi     
licere [id] facere quod illi fecerunt putat.

Today I am presenting a fresh comedy from a fresh Greek one, the Heauton
Timorumenos, a double plot which was made from a single one...

As to the rumours that malicious people have spread, that he has mixed up many
Greek plays, and made a few Latin ones, he does not deny that he has done this, and
he declares that he is not ashamed, and will do it again. He has the example of good
writers, and he thinks that he is allowed to do what they did.
(Heauton Timorumenos 4-6 and 16-21)

Again, the playwright has taken more than one Greek play and plundered them as sources for his new
work. He admits as much and denies any fault in so doing. He quotes the example of earlier boni,
presumably Plautus and his contemporaries, to justify his creative method. Here too, we are told
explicitly that he has made a specific change by doubling an aspect of his sources. 43
The prologue to The Brothers gives a further example of adaptation:

Synapothnescontes Diphili comoediast:

eam Commorientes Plautus fecit fabulam.
in Graeca adulescens est, qui lenoni ieripit
meretricem in prima tabula: eum Plautus locum
reliquit integrum. eum nunc hic sumpsit sibi
in Adelphos, uerbum de uerbo expressum extulit.
eam nos acturi sumus nouam: pernoscite
furtumne factum existumetis an locum
reprehensum, qui praeteritus neclegentiast.

Synapothnescontes is one of Diphilus’ comedies. Plautus made this play the

Commorientes. In the Greek play there is a young man, who snatches a courtesan
from a pimp in the first scene; Plautus left out the entire passage. [Terence] now has
placed it in his Adelphos, translated word for word. We are about to act this new
play: judge whether you think this deed to be theft or a restored passage which was
carelessly omitted.
(The Brothers 6-14)

The story is that there was a play by Diphilus called Synapothnescontes, which Plautus adapted to
create a play of the same name, but he omitted at least one scene in his new version of the plot. Terence

43
L. Richardson, Jr, ‘The Terentian adaptation of the Heauton Timorumenos of Menander’, GRBS 46 (2006) 13-36.
therefore used the Greek material that Plautus had rejected and inserted it into his Adelphoe that is itself
based on Menander’s play of the same name. He strongly defends his actions and claims that his play is
all the better for it. He rejects the criticisms of the purists who believe that he should only be translating
texts without supplementing or changing them.44
Although the precise meaning of contaminatio has long been debated and not enough
evidence survives about the precise way in which Terence adapted his sources, it is nevertheless clear
that what is being discussed here is some form of appropriation of one or more Greek sources that are
adapted, added to and combined. Moreover, Plautus (and according to Terence, other earlier dramatists
including Naevius and Ennius) did the same thing. The process of contaminatio or ‘barbarisation’ was
not regarded as a source for shame during Plautus’ own time. As Plautus himself declared ‘Plautus
vortit barbare’ (‘Plautus turned it into a barbaric language’).45

2. Early Plautine scholarship: Plautus as the key to lost Greek comedy

As a result of the open references made by Plautus and Terence to their sources and the seemingly
rough style of Plautine comedy modern critics have often regarded Plautus as a crude barstardiser of
Greek plays. Despite the comic power and exuberance of Plautine comedy and Plautus’ influence on
later writers, particularly Shakespeare and Moliere, his work was primarily studied in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a means of understanding lost Greek New Comedy. It was
not until Fraenkel’s ground breaking work that he began to be regarded as a figure worth studying in
his own right. Even then, the emphasis was firmly on attempting to trace or identify the environment in
which Plautus lived and worked and on isolating his sources. Thus, Eckard Lefèvre and the so-called
‘Freiburg school’ emphasised the centrality of the native dramatic traditions, such as Atellan farce,
with its impromptu performances, as the most important model for Plautus. 46 Some of these scholars go
so far as to deny that some of Plautus’ comedies are based on Greek plays. At least one proponent of
this school of thought argues that Plautus lost interest in the Greek palliata and moved from these
tightly structured plots towards improvised farce. He preferred a style characterised by a loosely
connected series of episodes, in which plot took a backseat to verbal gags, puns and slapstick. 47 The
opposite extreme is represented by Otto Zwierlein who outlined his own agenda as follows:

I seek to show that a series of harsh offences against logical development of plot and
in character-portrayal in Plautus are not in fact to be put at his door, but should be
ascribed to the poor artistic taste of later revisers. The grounds for often extravagant
theories of large-scale contaminatio are thus incidentally systematically eliminated.
Nor is Plautus the freely inventing writer that many recent and very recent
investigators, particularly in the German-speaking world, present us, for all his
freedom in detail Plautus essentially preserves the progression of the action of his
Greek original.48

Thus Zwierlein and his followers claim that Plautus closely adhered to his Greek sources, but that
‘Plautus’ was heavily and anonymously, but not irrecoverably, interpolated in antiquity. They postulate
that very little indeed of what is in Plautus’ comedy is indeed Plautine.
The debate as to how far the comedies were original works as opposed to close versions of
Greek models continues to this day. Even in Roman drama courses currently being taught at
universities he is still often regarded as somehow a lesser poet, a mere translator. Thus, Mark Damen
writes:

It’s a fair question to ask why he did not write his own original works - indeed, the
same could be posed for every Roman playwright whose works survive - and the
answer must be that he considered it wasted effort to till a field when the world doled

44
Interestingly, in the Eunuch he defends himself against another charge that of plagiarism, declaring that he had indeed ‘stolen’
characters from another play, but that he had not known that it had already been translated into Latin. It seems to have been
unacceptable to Terence to retranslate a text that had already appeared in Latin, a point that again emphasises the debt the Roman
poets owed to their Greek models.
45
D. Gilula, ‘Greek drama in Rome: some aspects of cultural transposition’, in The play out of context, ed. H. Scolnicov and P.
Holland (Cambridge 1989) 99-109.
46
E. Stärk, Plautus barbarus. Sechs Kapitel zur Originalität des Plautus, ScriptOralia 25 (Tübingen 1991) 1-12 but passim.
47
W. Hofmann (ed.), Plautus. Truculentus. Lateinisch und Deutsch. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert. Texte zur
Forschung 78 (Darmstadt 2001).
48
O. Zwierlein, Zur Kritik und Exegese des Plautus. Vol. I: Poenulus und Curculio (1990) 5.
 out free grain. In other words, why make a play when you can steal one? It was an
age when copyright did not yet exist and it was considered neither illegal nor
immoral, or even inadvisable, to adapt another’s work.49

The implication in the choice of the terms ‘steal’, ‘illegal’ and ‘immoral’ is clear. Even if by ancient
standards he was not at fault, by modern standards, Plautus like other extant Roman playwrights was a
thief and a plagiarist whose works are unoriginal and therefore second-rate.

3. Plautus and modern scholarship: Plautus as a metatheatrical playwright

Despite the charge of unoriginality aimed at him, over the last twenty years Plautus has begun to be
appreciated in his own right as a self-conscious and sophisticated comic playwright. Works by scholars
such as Niall Slater, Timothy Moore and Richard Beacham have stressed Plautus’ metatheatrical
style.50 They emphasise Plautus’ conscious underscoring of the play as a ‘play’ and his use of drama to
refer to itself as ‘drama’. In this approach the audience is encouraged to view the play on two levels,
both as a simulation of reality and also as an unreal piece of dramatic fiction. Although this view of
Plautus’ work has come under attack by some scholars, most noticeably Thomas Rosenmeyer, even
critics like he who object to the use of the term ‘metatheatre’ do not deny the existence of the elements
noted by scholars who have favoured the metatheatrical approach. 51 These elements include the
awareness of his characters that they are on a stage. They self-consciously draw attention to their status
as actors playing parts. They even seem to improvise thus usurping the role of the playwright. The
practice of internal role-playing is also characteristic of his oeuvre. His characters consciously take on
further roles as part of the development of the dramatic action. Some critics choose to regard these
elements merely as aspects of drama while others prefer the label ‘metatheatre’. However, no matter
what label is applied to this style its presence is surely noteworthy. As one scholar recently put it
metatheatre is ‘drama within drama as well as drama about drama’. As such it reveals a rather
surprising level of sophistication and theatrical awareness, especially when one considers the lack of
evidence for other literary activity at the time when Plautus was writing.

IV Drawing parallels

It seems unlikely that it is merely accidental that this period of recognition of Plautus’ dramatic
sophistication coincides with the world of post-modernist theatre and the trend of manipulating ancient
drama to create new, vibrant and often metatheatrical performances that are in tune with and responsive
to modern society. I would argue that this is very similar to what Plautus himself was doing. What
perhaps most characterises post-modernist theatre is its self-conscious and self-reflexive nature. 52 This
is demonstrated in two ways, the creation of a new drama from adaptations of earlier works and the
application of a metatheatrical style. Both of these elements are present in Plautus’ work. Just as
twentieth century drama has developed into a multi-layered genre that combines a range of sources and
influences to produce new works that continually call attention to their own theatrical nature, so did
Plautine comedy.
Greek comedy was the main framework used by Plautus as the basis for his comedies, just as
Greek tragedy is the model employed by modern dramatists for their new adaptations and creations
produced in recent years.53 As the modern playwrights drastically altered these tragedies so did Plautus
radically modify the Greek comedies. Following on from Fraenkel’s work there is a near consensus
49
www.usu.edu/markdamen/clasdram/chapters/141plautus.htm (accessed 24/3/2009).
50
Foremost in this area has been Niall Slater with his Plautus in performance, 2nd edn. (Princeton 2000) 3-18 and 168-78. R.
Beacham, The Roman theatre and its audience (London 1991) continued to develop a performance based approach, emphasising
the self-consciousness of Roman drama. See also M. Barchiesi, ‘Plauto e il ‘metateatro’ antico’, Il verri 31 (1970) 113-30, F.
Muecke, ‘Plautus and the theatre of disguise’, CA 5 (1986) 216-29, S. Frangoulides, Handlung und Nebenhandlung. Theater,
Metatheater und Gattungsbewusstsein in der römischen Komödie (Stuttgart 1997) and T. Moore, The theater of Plautus. Playing
to the audience (Texas 1998) 1-49.
51
T. Rosenmeyer, ‘Metatheater: An essay on overload’, Arion 10 (2002) 87-119.
52
The twentieth century and Republican Rome are not of course unique in being characterised by such a theatrical style. Other
periods that have produced metatheatrical, self-conscious drama include Shakespearian England and the Spanish Golden Age.
53
Martha Malamud, makes a similar point concerning the adaptation of Plautus for the film A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Forum:
Like Plautus, who assimilated what was for him, high culture, Greek new comedy, and adapted it for popular Roman
tastes, Gelbart and Shevelove took what was for them high culture, ‘the classics’, and made Roman comedy popular
by translating Plautine humour into vaudevillian and burlesque humour, the Roman slave into a Jewish comic, and
Rome into Brooklyn.
among scholars that Plautus has adapted and altered whatever Greek plays he may have used as a
models to a considerable degree. He has altered the structure of many of the plots with which he was
working,54 as well as enlarging and expanding on the characters’ roles and speeches. He also flavoured
the plays with his distinctive and flamboyant language. 55 Despite these changes, the underlying Greek
comedies can still, however, be glimpsed.
On the other hand, the presence of other models should not be ignored. Plautus was exposed
to Greek tragedy and old comedy that was performed by itinerant companies. 56 Native Italian drama
also played a key role. The stock characters of Atellan farce (in particular the clown, Maccus, from
whom Plautus took one of his names) influenced the Roman playwright. The metrical forms of
Fescennine verse, with their range of poetic meters and snappy dialogue, were another model,
providing that the limited extant evidence concerning these verses can be trusted. 57 One can also argue
that Plautus’ self-conscious metatheatricality and structure has its roots in the self-conscious poetry of
Callimachus and other Hellenistic poets. According to Niall Slater: ‘In Plautus, the Greek, South Italian
and Roman theatrical traditions collide with explosively creative results’.58
While the search for specific lost models is less productive in the case of Plautus, what does
seem likely is that he adapted and was influenced by a wide range of sources. His comedies are in fact
a pastiche of various models. This combination of disparate elements and traditions is therefore a
creative process not unlike that of post-modernist drama in the twenty and twenty-first centuries.
Plautus’ comedies can equally well be described as combinations of a mixture of sources and vibrant
creations in their own right. The same is true of the post-modern plays discussed above. They, too, are
combinations of a range of traditions and texts, but also something quite new and vibrant. The
authorship of these plays like those of Plautus should be ascribed to the new playwright rather than to
the sources.

V Applying the modern to the ancient

If we accept the parallel between Plautus and the recent post-modern adaptations of Greek drama, it is
possible that other parallels can be drawn that will add to our understanding of the conditions under
which Plautus worked and the society in which he operated. If the phenomenon of post-modernism is
to flourish it seems that certain conditions must be in place. Firstly, accessibility of a range of different
media is required in order for different texts and genres to be combined. The impact of globalism and
in particular the internet has been a factor in the development of this trend in our society. Not only,
however, must there be a range of traditions accessible, but these traditions must also be understood by
the audience. It is not possible to play with theatrical conventions, or parody genres, if those
conventions and genres are not themselves familiar to the audience. Additionally there is a
corresponding need for a high level of theatrical sophistication on the part both of the playwright and
the audience in order to fully appreciate these nuances. A vibrant theatrical culture and a social
environment that merges various strands and promotes creativity are both necessary.
If we apply these criteria back to Plautine comedy, we can perhaps better appreciate Plautus’
dramatic background. The Roman conquests can be compared in their impact to modern globalism.
The expansion of Rome united and assimilated a range of other cultures and societies. As a result, a
range of traditions were available to Plautus, giving him access both to native Italian drama, with
which the Roman audiences would have been familiar, and to Greek models. One can argue that in this
period of the literary and geographical expansion of the Roman world, there must have been an

M. Malamud, ‘Brooklyn-on-the-Tiber: Roman comedy on Broadway and in film’, in Imperial projections. Ancient Rome in
modern popular culture, ed. S. R. Joshel, M. Malamud and D. T. McGuire (Baltimore and London 2001) 192.
54
On the structure of the Menaechmi see A. S. Gratwick Plautus: Menachmi (Cambridge 1993) 23-30, W. Steidle, ‘Zur
Komposition von Plautus’ Menaechmi’, RhM 114 (1971) 247-61, K. Gaiser ‘Zur Eigenart der römischen Komödie: Plautus und
Terenz gegenüber ihren griechischen Vorbildern’, ANRW, 1,2 (1972) 1063, Mark Damen, ‘Actors and act-divisions in the Greek
original of Plautus’ Menaechmi’, CW 82 (1989) 409-10, E. Fantham ‘Act IV of the Menaechmi: Plautus and his original’,
Classical Philology 63 (1968) 175-83 and L. Maurice, ‘A calculated comedy of errors: the structure of Plautus’ Menaechmi’,
Syllecta Classica 16 (2005) 31-59.
55
With regard to the Menaechmi see E. Fraenkel, Plautine elements in Plautus, trans. T. Drevikovsky and F. Muecke (Oxford
2007) 160-61 and 239-40, R. Maltby, ‘The language of Plautus’s parasites, in Theatre. Ancient and modern, ed. L. Hardwick, P.
Easterling, S. Ireland, N. Lowe and F. Macintosh (The Open University , Milton Keynes) and at:
www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/Conf99/index.htm (accessed 25/3/2009) and J. C. B. Lowe, ‘Plautus’s parasites
and the Atellana’, in Studien zur vorliterarischen Periode im frühen Rom, ed. G. Vogt-Spira (Tübingen 1989) 167.
56
J. Lightfoot, ‘Nothing to do with the technitae of Dionysus?’, in Greek and Roman actors. Aspects of an ancient profession,
ed. P. Easterling and E. Hall (Cambridge 2002) 209-12.
57
For an overview of these sources see G. Duckworth, The nature of Roman comedy, 2nd edn. (Princeton 1994) 7-16.
58
N. Slater, Plautus (n. 50, above) 5.
explosion of creativity as the society became exposed to new genres and styles. In such a climate, there
was no shame in taking over earlier Greek comedies and mixing and adding to them to produce new,
raw and vibrant plays that reflected the ethos of the age. It was perhaps even a source of pride to
appropriate these elite cultural models and to adapt them for the Roman audiences by combining them
with native traditions. Interestingly, a half century later, however, Terence faced criticism for deviating
from his Greek models. By his time a mood of preservation and idealisation of the Greek world had set
in. Certainly the smooth elegance of Terentian comedy lacks the energetic vitality of the Plautine plays.
This quality is reflected in modern works such as those produced by Charles Mee.
As discussed above, this practice of combining sources gives wide scope for meatheatricality.
Post-modernist adapters of Greek tragedy are attracted to metatheatricality, as was Plautus. One of the
effects of metatheatrical references is the creation of a bond between actors and audience. This allows
spectators to identity with the actors as well as with each other. The members of that audience thus
share a common body of knowledge about theatre, its language, practices and values that unites them.
The interweaving of multiple layers thus invites the audience to enter into the game of identifying the
different elements. It invites complicity between spectator and performer.
One reason for the prominent use of metatheatricality in modern adaptations of ancient drama
is that there is a wide gap between the content of the plays and the audience. The metatheatrical effects
compensate for this by drawing actors and audience closer. They also, however, serve to highlight the
gap between the audience and the myths. 59 In other words, metatheatricality provides a link between
the actors and the spectators that is especially necessary when the drama is in some way ‘foreign’ and
‘alien’. Here again, the Plautine comparison becomes valid. Plautus in presenting his Roman audiences
with his fabula palliata that consciously created an illusion of Greekness is also dealing with a foreign
and alien world. The metatheatricality of Plautus’ plays therefore reminds the audience that they are
not part of the foreign illusory world that they are watching. It thus creates distance between them and
that world.
A metatheatrical style requires a certain level of theatrical awareness on the part of the audience.
Recent scholarship that has highlighted the metatheatrical aspect of Plautus’ work has also stressed the
comparative sophistication of his audiences. 60 Comparison with modern evidence strengthens this
picture. It indicates that Plautus lived in society that possessed a vibrant theatrical culture. It seems
extremely unlikely that such a self-conscious style of drama, even when cloaked in a heavy layer of
slapstick and farce, could be appreciated in an environment in which the theatre was not both well-
established and appreciated.

VI Conclusions

Recent years have witnessed a number of new productions that are characterised by both a combination
of models and by metatheatricality. Similar characteristics are observed in Plautine comedy. It is
therefore likely that certain conditions that exist in modern theatre were also present in Republican
Rome. These consist of exposure to a range of theatrical traditions, both native and foreign and a
sophisticated appreciation of theatre by its audiences. The application of reception studies to the
examination of the ancient world indicates how this modern scholarly approach can help shed light not
only on the modern world in which classical tragedy is still being performed, but also on the ancient
world in which drama first flourished.

Bar Ilan University, Israel

59
H. Foley, ‘Bad women: gender politics in late twentieth-century performance and revision of Greek tragedy’, in Hall et all,
Dionysus (n. 18, above) 78.
60
J. Wright, Dancing in chains. The stylistic unity of the Commoedia Palliata (Rome 1974) 183-96.