The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy John Barsby C.W. Marshall . The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii + 320. US $90.00. ISBN-13 978-0-521-86161-8. This is an important book, which will be compulsory reading for anyone interested in the performance of Roman comedy. It combines a mastery of the ancient evidence for Roman comedy and modern discussions thereof with the experience of a successful director of the plays of Plautus and a familiarity with other dramatic traditions and with theoretical work on dramatic performance. Marshall does wonders in teasing out answers from the fascinating but often inconclusive or contradictory evidence, and there is simply not enough space in a relatively brief review to list his many interesting conclusions on specific points, let alone to debate them. The picture Marshall paints of Plautine drama (it is a book largely about Plautus rather than Terence) is that it belonged within a healthy, vibrant, even raw, comic tradition which drew its effect from the interaction of scripted and unscripted material. The "Introduction" (1–15) provides a concise account of Roman Comedy's relation to Greek New Comedy and to the various known preliterary entertainments (with a particularly coherent summary of the elusive genre [End Page 81] of Hellenistic mime). This is followed by a long first chapter "The Experience of Roman Comedy" (16–82), which deals with opportunities for performance, the business of comedy, performance spaces, set, costume, stage properties and audience. One crucial question, following Goldberg's demonstration (JRS 1998) that the audience at the Ludi Megalenses must have largely sat on the temple steps, which cannot have held much more than 1,300 people, is whether we can still talk of mass popular entertainment. Marshall believes that the space for the Ludi Apollinares ad Apollinis may have been similarly restricted, and he reduces Moore's audience space in the Forum for the Curculio (AJPh 1991) by making the actors face west instead of east. At the same time he identifies a number of less cramped performance spaces, including the Comitium itself and the temporary wooden amphitheatres in the Forum posited by Welch for gladiatorial shows (JRA 1994: see now her The Roman Amphitheatre [2007]), which he thinks may have held some 3,400 for dramatic performances. Another related question is whether in order to meet "popular demand" we should envisage multiple performances of the same play at the one festival. Marshall believes that "each troupe would present a single play at a festival and the same play would run for its length" (81), a not implausible suggestion but one lacking positive evidence: he relies on the ambivalent Pl. Ps. 1334–5, which might alternatively refer to a second play by the same troupe. The second chapter (83–125) is entitled "Actors and Roles" and is mainly concerned with the size of Plautus' troupe and the question of the doubling of roles. Marshall curiously insists several times that, contrary to the conventional view, the size of Plautus' troupe is defined by the largest number of performers on stage (including non-speaking actors) at any point of a given play, only to undercut this view by a conclusion that "[p]erhaps we do best to imagine a core troupe of four or five performers … who were in the habit of hiring one or two others for most performances" (113–114), which is not far from the standard view of a core troupe of five or six. His purpose seems to be to argue that any doubling of roles was not governed by a limitation on the number of actors, as in Greek New Comedy, so much as by "a desirable, Roman aesthetic" (104). In fact he is a great believer in the doubling of roles, claiming that the Roman audience would have appreciated the virtuosity demanded of the actors, and argues that in many cases the leading two or three actors, each playing several roles, would have performed the bulk of the play. All this is backed up by detailed analysis of the length of roles in the individual plays and of the off-stage manoeuvres required to...