It is not at all unusual for even the staunchest admirers of Plautus to feel that his plays lack genuine seriousness. His skill, his wit, his robust gaiety, above all his showmanship are recognized for their excellence. They always hit the mark. And yet he is characterized as an entertainer only, a classical George S. Kaufman.
Even Erich Segal in his illuminating study, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus, for all his enthusiastic admiration of Plautus, seems uneasy about judging his achievement as anything more than masterful popular entertainment. Plautus deserves our attention, he writes, because he ‘was the most successful comic poet in the ancient world …. And yet few scholars of the last century have been willing to examine Plautus for what he undeniably was — a theatrical phenomenon’; and he concludes, ‘His art does not give rise to “thoughtful laughter” …. For True Comedy should banish all thought — of mortality and morality’. Segal willingly compares Plautus with Aristophanes and Molière (he mentions Shakespeare only to dismiss the possibility of comparison as unreasonable), and surely no one would write of either as only theatrical phenomena, banishing all thought.