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Plautus in Performance: The Theatre of the Mind (Greek and Roman Theatre Archive,)

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This is one of the most important contributions in Plautine studies since Erich Segal's "Roman Laughter". A close reading of six "plays about play-making" (Epidicus, Persa, Asinaria, Casina, Bacchides, Pseudolus), the book closes down on the cardinal Plautine figure of the servus callidus as the conductor and master-puppeteer of the playworld. This is a book with a thesis: that Plautine theatre is non-mimetic, non-illusory, non-realistic; that, inasmuch as it imitates not life but previous text, it is metatheatrical and intertextual at the outmost. Disadvantages? Slater sometimes overstates his case: for instance, the thesis that in the "Persa" the pimp Dordalus represents the "world of tragedy" (p.53) is one example of such overdrawn conclusions. But not many of those are to be found. Throughout the book, Slater offers specimens of sophisticated performance analysis. The book should perhaps be read in juxtaposition with Slater's newly published volume on Aristophanes.