The Rope And Other Plays Av Plautus

Brilliantly adapting Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, the sublime comedies of Plautus (c. 254-184 BC) are the earliest surviving complete works of Latin literature. The four plays collected here reveal a playwright in his prime, exploring classic themes and developing standard characters that were to influence the comedies of Shakespeare, Molière and many others. In <i>The Ghost</i>, a dissolute son who has squandered his father''s money is thrown into disarray when he returns from abroad, a theme that is explored further in the comedy of errors <i>A Three-Dollar Day</i>. In <i>The Rope—</i>regarded by many as the best of Plautus'' plays—the shipwreck of a pimp and his slaves leads to the touching reunion of a father and his daughter, while Amphitryo, Plautus''s only excursion into divine mythology, offers a cheerful account of how Jupiter became father to Hercules.<br><br>For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature