1. Its metatheatrical design is consistent and coherent. Slater, N.W., Plautus in Performance (Princeton 1985)Google Scholar draws attention to a number of metatheatrical elements in the play; Beacham, R.C., The Roman Theatre and its Audience (London 1991)Google Scholar, to more. However, no critic yet has done justice to the systematic, thematically unifying deployment of metatheatrical strategies in Casina. Forehand, W.E., ‘Plautus’ Casina: An Explication’, Arethusa 6 (1973) 233–56Google Scholar, has interpreted the play holistically, as an account of the consequences of Lysidamus’ lechery, but is almost apologetic concerning his enthusiasm for Casina, which he considers ‘bare’ with respect to plot, and shallow with respect to characterisation and the treatment of philosophical issues (233). I shall attempt to argue that the serious social issues which underscore the play’s comedy are developed thoroughly (morally, not moralistically) by means of the play’s metatheatrical strategies.

2. Compare the party wall in Miles Gloriosus. The audience knows that the cast is able to come and go between the two ‘houses’, that is the backstage area, but for the purposes of the play accepts that they are separate structures. Palaestrio creates a party wall, by which Philo-comasium may come and go, undetected by Sceledrus. He thus recreates the space as backstage area.

3. Contrary to Slater (n.l above), who deems it an unnecessary supplement to the play’s action (72). Forehand (n.l above) recognises that ‘the prologue’s remarks may have also an organic relationship to the meaning of the play’ (236), which includes the establishment of a non-illusory, self-consciously theatrical context, and the signalling of a plot which departs from the conventions of Roman Comedy both in substance and tone.

4. However, the suggestion of Skutsch, F., ‘Ein Prolog des Diphilos und eine Komddie des Plautus’, Kleine Schriften (Berlin 1914), 184–96Google Scholar, that Fides utters the prologue, is unnecessary and unconvincing. My own inclination is that the speaker of the prologue is Cleostrata, inasmuch as she is Casina’s principal playwright (apart from Plautus himself: see lines 34 and 65), and this play’s answer to the servus callidus.

5. Cf. Leo, F., Plautinische Forschungen (Berlin 1912), 207Google Scholar n.2. Slater (n.l above) argues that most of the prologue is post-Plautine, drawing attention particularly to the several references to the author by name. Slater’s reluctance to admit these references as Plautine, rather than post-Plautine, is surprising in the light of his sympathetic attitude towards a self-reflexive, metatheatrical reading of Plautine comedy.

6. Plautus’ audience is sensitised to the pun on ludus. Miles Gloriosus, the principal (metatheatrical) concern of which is the delineation of the elements of theatrical production (script, direction, casting, costumes, etc.), manipulates the same word-play (cf. J.A. Hanson, ‘The Play’s the Thing’, presented at Dartmouth College in 1982).

7. I am less interested in the actual content of Clerumenoe than in Plautus’ version of the play. (Of course, these two things might be identical.) Plautus sets before the audience a con-ventional’Greek New Comic plot structure, against which to bounce his own, less conventional, Roman play.

8. Compare, for example, Cistellaria 120–48.

9. Cf. Slater (n.l above), 70: ‘Its [Casina’s] virtues are in part its very departure from, or omission of, standard Roman comedy plot elements.’

10. Also, if Casina did appear, ‘she’ would be played by a ‘he’—exactly as Cleostrata arranges it. (Cf. Beacham [n.l above], 90.)

11. Contrary to Forehand (n.l above), who accepts the slave wedding sequence at face value, and as an assertion of ‘the basic credibility of certain details’ (236).

12. Cf. Plautus’ Persa.

13. Contrary to Forehand (n.l above), who considers that this scene leaves itself a bitter aftertaste (237). However, it does not follow from the fact that the characters of a comedy take themselves seriously that an audience will feel compelled to take them so, and the scene between Olympio and Chalinus has comic potential which ought to be exploited.

14. I was interested to note that Beacham (n.l above) also assumes that Olympio and Chalinus collide early in the scene, ‘thus immediately giving their confrontation a physically violent expression’ (91). However, I have chosen to make it a head-on collision with a view to Olym-pio’s next line and action, whereas Beacham’s Chalinus is still niggling Olympio from behind.

15. I prefer this to the staging intimated by Beacham (n.l above), ‘with Olympio manhandling Chalinus throughout the sequence, while perhaps miming the sort of torments awaiting him’ (93). It allows the two characters to interact in a more interesting fashion, and also promotes the play’s focus on fictional worlds—plays, authors, and audiences—to a much greater extent.

16. Unlike the authors of previous interpretations (Forehand [n.l above]; Slater [n.l above]; MacCary, W.T., ‘The Bacchae in Plautus’ Casina’, Hermes 103 [1975], 459–63Google Scholar; Tatum, J., Plautus: The Darker Comedies [Baltimore 1983])Google Scholar, I place little emphasis on Lysidamus’ ‘lust’. (See below.) In fact these critics differ vastly in their attitude and response to Lysidamus: Forehand considers him ‘thoroughly objectionable … from beginning to end’ (253); whereas Tatum argues that ‘in laughing at Lysidamus we come to feel a wry affection for him’ (88f.). Tatum’s experience of actual performance rings true, although I would like to see Cleostrata played with a lighter touch than his comments seem to imply. Cleostrata should come over as a woman who loves her husband and wants to throttle him (otherwise neither her decision to risk her official status as Lysidamus’ wife, in order to regain her personal status in that role, nor the ‘happy ending’ make any sense at all dramatically). Lysidamus must be sufficiently lovable that the audience does not find his reconciliation with his wife distasteful—and sufficiently dubious morally to make it doubtful of her future happiness.

17. I do not see the exchange between Cleostrata and Myrrhina turning ‘progressively nastier’ (cf. Beacham [n.l above], 95).

18. Contrary to general critical opinion. And subject to qualification. But in the first place there is just sufficient ambiguity associated with Lysidamus’ advances on Olympio, and alleged past advances on Chalinus, to make the audience uncertain about the status of these. In the second place Cleostrata seems not to feel threatened by anyone in the play apart from Casina. If in fact Lysidamus is prone to chasing the male slaves then she is either unaware of it or unconcerned about it. Possibly this is because only another woman can challenge her relationship with Lysidamus. In that case his homosexual liaisons are irrelevant here.

19. I am assuming that lines 851–53 should be attributed as follows: LY. at mihi, qui belle hanc tracto, non bellum facit … vae! OL. quid negotist? LY. opsecro, ut valentulast … LY. But she does not make war on me, who handle her gently … aah! OL. What’s up? LY. I say, what a strong little thing she is … This makes sense dramatically, and is more easily reconciled with the presentation of Lysidamus and Olympic In the preceding lines, Olympio responds more simply and suspiciously to the unexpectedly violent behaviour of his new ‘wife’.

20. She is more real to Olympio, which is why he is more inclined to fear the aggressive mock wedding song of Pardalisca, and to suspect the activities of ‘Casinus’.

21. In this case Casina is not concerned, as Slater (n.l above) believes it to be, with ‘lust so excessive and animalistic that it becomes sex without joy’ (93); nor is Lysidamus a figure of sexual domination over his household, as MacCary (n.l6 above, 462) considers him to be. Rather, he is like the husband and father in the film Moonstruck (MGM 1987) who, in the opinion of his wife, chases women ‘because he fears death’.

22. Beacham (n.l above, 97) notes well the metatheatrical joke here: ‘Chalinus cannot change his expression because he wears a mask.’

23. Cf. Segal, E., Roman Laughter² (Oxford 1987), 24fGoogle Scholar.: ‘The Casina presents a situation closest to an actual husband-wife fistfight, when old Lysidamus urges his slave to strike his wife’s servant, while he stands toe-to-toe with Cleostrata, arguing violently … husband and wife pummel each other by proxy.’

24. Both Slater (n.l above, 84) and Beacham (n.l above, 232 n.26) miss this second level of discourse when condemning Lysidamus for his refusal to accept the criticisms owing to an elderly lover.

25. Compare the prologue to Terence’s Heauton Timorumenos, in which the leading player explains the playwright’s decision to cast an old man in a part usually assigned to a young actor.

26. Contrary to Beacham (n.l above), who sees it as ‘a graphic demonstration … of how Lysidamus has been brought low by his unseemly and brutalising lust’ (108).

27. Cf. Slater (n.l above), 86f.

28. Cf. ibid. 85n.26.

29. No longer the barking wife; rather, the barking playwright!

30. No doubt, some of Cleostrata’s stage crew are peeking out, visible to the audience, but unnoticed by Lysidamus, in order to cue the initial sound effects and then Pardalisca’s entrance.

31. Slater (n.l above), 88f.

32. Cf.Tatum (n.16 above), 88: ‘The symbol of male dominance of the female brings about the complete overthrow of the male and becomes merely the phallus of comedy, an object of ridicule, not power.’

33. Slater (n.l above) rightly regards this moment as the logical consequence of Lysidamus’ self-degradation from the position of master to the situation of slave. Beacham (n.l above) shows how even this role is denied Lysidamus, who is ‘set to start, only to freeze at the “starter’s block” when Chalinus’ cry rings out from the porch of Alcesimus’ house, “hold it right there, lover boy!”’ (113f.).

34. Several friends and colleagues read and commented on an earlier draft of this article. Thanks David Konstan, Tony Boyle, Frances Muecke, Bill Dominik, John Penwill.