Roman Comedy

by Kenneth McLeish (Editor)

The greater part of Roman Comedy is concerned with the plays of Plautus and Terence, which apart from being well worth reading in their own right, also tell us a great deal about daily life in Ancient Rome. There are chapters dealing with the two playwrights' sources in Greece and Italy, and also with the kind of production, theatre and actors they were writing for.

The comedy routines of pantomime, Punch and Judy, music hall, television and films can often be related to the works of Plautus and Terence and as the author shows, some of the greatest European writers (Shakespeare, Moliere, Jonson) studied the plays, and translated and adapted them for their own purpose.

Roman Comedy, as a clear accessible introduction to the subject, will have a wide appeal, to those following Classical Civilisation courses at secondary school at GCSE or A-level, and also to those studying European literature at a more advanced level.

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

John Kenneth Tyrrell McLeish, known as Kenneth McLeish was a British writer, playwright and translator. McLeish, "the most widely respected and prolific translator of drama in Britain", translated all the surviving classical Greek plays, most plays by Henrik Ibsen and Georges Feydeau, and individual plays by Plautus, Molière, Alfred Jarry, August Strindberg, Ödön von Horváth and Eugène Labiche.