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Terence's Hecyra raises social, literary and theatrical issues of great interest to modern students of Roman comedy and, indeed, of Roman culture more broadly. The play pays strikingly close attention to the domestic problems of women and experiments boldly with traditional comic forms, not only in its creation of anticipatory suspense, but through its variations on traditional situations and roles and its metatheatrical qualities. In addition, Terence's response in his prologues to the play's two putative failures is important, if tendentious, evidence for the mechanics of theatrical performance in the second century, especially the conjunction of theatrical and gladiatorial shows. This edition opens the play's many interpretive challenges to wider scrutiny while remaining attentive to the linguistic needs of students at all levels.
Terence's Hecyra raises social, literary and theatrical issues of great interest to modern students of Roman comedy and, indeed, of Roman culture more broadly. The play pays strikingly close attention to the domestic problems of women and experiments boldly with traditional comic forms, not only in its creation of anticipatory suspense, but through its variations on traditional situations and roles and its metatheatrical qualities. In addition, Terence's response in his prologues to the play's two putative failures is important, if tendentious, evidence for the mechanics of theatrical performance in the second century, especially the conjunction of theatrical and gladiatorial shows. This edition opens the play's many interpretive challenges to wider scrutiny while remaining attentive to the linguistic needs of students at all levels.
For eight centuries after his death Menander was the third most popular poet in the Greek-speaking world, and his plays, through Roman imitations and adaptations, engendered a tradition of European light drama that extends to our own day. But it is only since 1844 that some of the actual texts of Menander's plays have been rediscovered, mostly in Egyptian papyri. Two of these have given us four-fifths of the script of Samia (The Woman from Samos), a play of deception and misunderstanding in which a marriage that everyone desires almost fails to happen, two women and a baby are almost ruined, and a loving father almost loses his only son, because the people at home and the people abroad have both been doing things behind each other's backs - but somehow everything ends happily after all. This is the first full-scale edition with English commentary and is suitable for upper-level students.
For eight centuries after his death Menander was the third most popular poet in the Greek-speaking world, and his plays, through Roman imitations and adaptations, engendered a tradition of European light drama that extends to our own day. But it is only since 1844 that some of the actual texts of Menander's plays have been rediscovered, mostly in Egyptian papyri. Two of these have given us four-fifths of the script of Samia (The Woman from Samos), a play of deception and misunderstanding in which a marriage that everyone desires almost fails to happen, two women and a baby are almost ruined, and a loving father almost loses his only son, because the people at home and the people abroad have both been doing things behind each other's backs - but somehow everything ends happily after all. This is the first full-scale edition with English commentary and is suitable for upper-level students.
