On (Not) Reading Inscribed Objects in Latin Comedy

Abstract:

This paper examines the performance dynamics of onstage texts in Plautus’ comedies and, in the process, argues that an audience-level viewpoint is essential to understanding Latin stage comedy. Examples of rare epigraphic texts are compared with the more common motif of in-play “perishable texts.” The perishable type were performed by actors as though verbatim and transmit novel information to the audience. In contrast, epigraphic texts are paraphrased and so require specific knowledge. Each kind of text thus does different dramatic work, and the difference originates in the different material “entanglements” of each medium in the lives of ancient Italians. As such, Plautus’ audiences understood comic theater through its extra-textual elements as much as through “the text” as we have it. To understand Roman comedy, scholars must also account for how ancient objects were entangled in Roman culture.