Reviews for The Rope and Other Plays

The average rating for The Rope and Other Plays based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-04-18 00:00:00 Frances Laskowski By itself, the comedy of Plautus is not inherently bad. It is composed primarily of mutually exclusive scenes featuring the same characters placed adjacently to one another, with very little thought put into arrangement, delivery or humour. To the modern reader, Plautus is IRONIC, not COMEDIC, because his plays are characterised by such tropes as the long-lost daughter who just happens to still possess trinkets given to her by her father when she was a baby (The Rope) or one man pretending to be someone else in order to get with "someone else's" wife (Amphitryo). It's only when one compares Plautus to the comedic genius of Aristophanes, or even Menander, that he fails, pretty miserably. What destroys any hope of Plautus' continued appreciation is his plays' non-sensibility. Almost all of Act II of Amphitryo consists of the eponymous character asking one of two questions to his slave: Were you asleep? or, Who told you that? The humour on which Amphitryo depends is its cast's inability to differentiate Sosia, Mercury, Jupiter and Amphitryo, but the play does not reconcile these characters satisfactorily, and the worthy characters like Alcmena (comparable to Desdemona of Othello) are strewn on the sidelines in favour of repetitive, clunky scenes which serve only to lengthen the play to its requirement. The Rope fares even worse. Its cast is far too large for each character to gain any sense of familiarity with the audience, meaning that Plautus has to rely on stock characters like the typical villain (who even seems to KNOW he's in the wrong), the industrious go-getter (who isn't rewarded for his industry in the play at all), and the demure young girl. The Rope is exceedingly soap-operatic in its delivery: much of what happens (and little happens at all) is devoid of any emotion, leaving the audience unsympathetic and, most importantly, not laughing. The eponymous Rope is such a trivial prop, and the play might have fared better if named Palæstra, the aforementioned demure young girl, who is married off by her father after having met him for the first time in at least fifteen years; or if named The Procurer, for indeed Labrax, the villain, probably receives most lines, and, out of all the characters, is the one I understand most. Despite having criticised Plautus such, I can appreciate that his plays were no doubt received differently. New Comedy, and especially ROMAN Comedy, was vastly different to Greek Comedy, and besides, Mercury himself acknowledges that Amphitryo is more Tragic than Comedic. If Plautus had been writing tragedies that were not designed to elicit laughter, I feel he may have been more successful. As it stands, though it is important to cherish all Ancient material, I for one would have sacrificed some Plautus for some more Menander.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-06-20 00:00:00 Barbara Taylor Plautus was dynamic, and this selection of plays is a perfect sampling of his talent's many facets. It has been well said by D.C. Berman that finding ancient comedies, including Shakespeare, really funny just means you're trying too hard, for comedy, unlike tragedy, evolves with the times. Nevertheless, these plays are fascinating, for they display, in rudimentary form, the mastery of eternal comic technique. Everything you like about Mel Brooks is here, from mutually duplicitous interlocutors, to repetition unto laughter. Even audience participation a la Bertolt Brecht is on display in Amphitryo, where the spectators are to be convinced they are directing the action. The irrepressible optimism of slaves is contemptible, however.