The title under review, Plautus: Curculio, focuses on the titular Latin comedy. In the spirit of that strange little play, and of ‘comic inversion’ generally, I will serve the dessert course first: this is a lovely book, meticulously written, but with a joy that is as rare in contemporary scholarship as it is refreshing. Although per the editorial masthead an ‘accessible introduction’ to a single play (and, more distantly, Roman comedy overall) and intended for non-specialists, many – perhaps most – working Classicists would profit from reading it; and just as importantly, they would enjoy doing so.
Now on to the mains. G.-G.'s volume is the seventh (and at the time of writing, most recent) in the Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions series, edited by C.W. Marshall and N. Slater. With a purview of all ancient Graeco-Roman comedy, entries in the series are meant to ‘provide an overview of [an individual] play's themes … and literary contexts’, while also ‘recognizing that each play was intended in the first instance for performance’ (flyleaf copy). G.-G.'s contribution capably exceeds the brief.
The book is refreshingly slim (181 pages, soup to nuts), but nevertheless packed with ideas, as suits an introductory text. The writing is lean, straightforward and engaging. G.-G. includes nine full chapters, sensibly arranged from general (Chapter 1: ‘Plautus, Curculio, and Roman Comedy: The Basics’) to specific topics (Chapter 9: ‘Curculio after Plautus’). In between, he covers substantial ground, from the play's plot (Chapter 2: ‘What's Going on in Curculio?’) and themes (Chapter 3: ‘Major Themes and Humor in Curculio’) to its uniquely Roman/Latin elements (Chapter 8: ‘Curculio and Roman Life’). G.-G. also devotes two full chapters to details of ‘Curculio in Performance’, with separate emphases on music/metre (Chapter 4, ‘Music, Song, and Dance’) and staging (Chapter 5, ‘Stagecraft’).
These chapters are mostly the high-level overviews one expects from an introductory text, with occasional dips into specific, illustrative detail (e.g. the comprehensive discussion of rhythmic structure in Chapter 4). More surprising is an entire chapter devoted to the Choragus’ speech (Chapter 7: ‘The Speech of the Choragus’), a remarkable moment from the middle of the play when an actor, identified in the text as choragus (‘producer’ or ‘props-master’), interrupts the play to offer a wry tour of the Roman forum and its sordid denizens (braggarts, adulterers, thieves and so on; Pl. Curc. 462–86). The speech is a famous example of comic ‘metatheatre’, the deliberate piercing of a dramatic illusion by those involved in its production. Parsing the excursus requires substantial historical context, and having myself taught it to both undergraduate and graduate students with mixed success, I admire the care and clarity of G.-G.'s discussion. He includes several helpful charts, maps and diagrams, while also distilling major conclusions from existing scholarship (e.g. P. Sommella, ‘La Roma plautina’, in A. Raffaelli and A. Tontini [edd.], Lecturae Plautinae Sarsinates 8 [2005]; M. Hanses, CP 115 [2020]).
G.-G. tees up this focused discussion in an earlier chapter on metatheatre as a concept (Chapter 6: ‘Play Inside and Outside the Play: Curculio and Metatheater’). Here he draws on established work on the topic (particularly N. Slater, Plautus in Performance [1985] and T. Moore, The Theatre of Plautus [1998]), to which G.-G. adds a novel typology of four metatheatre subcategories: ‘the play within a play’ (Type 1), ‘paratragedy’ or tragic burlesque (Type 2), the recognition of theatrical conventions by in-play characters (Type 3) and the deliberate breaking of the dramatic illusion by actors-as-characters (Type 4). Taken together, Chapters 6 and 7 ably demonstrate how to make abstruse scholarly concepts accessible to non-specialists. For example, G.-G. avoids excessive jargon and plainly explains key concepts (e.g. Type 3 Metatheatre: ‘Plautus really likes his characters to know that they're characters’, p. 92). When jargon is unavoidable, G.-G. defines it clearly (e.g. ‘Paratragedy is parody of tragedy’, p. 91), while also setting its first instance in bold type; all bolded words are collected in a compact glossary at the end of the book (pp. 157–9), in addition to a comprehensive index.
Despite such care, I wonder how novices will handle the denser detail of Chapters 6 and 7, sandwiched as they are between less dense, higher-level discussions. (To illustrate: the Choragus chapter is sixteen pages, nearly the same length as Chapter 8, ‘Curculio and Roman Life’.) I suppose it depends on the reader. Writing an ‘introductory’ text is a near-impossible task, as every concession towards accessibility undercuts nuance. I suspect the fine detail of the metatheatre chapters is deliberate leavening of their airier surroundings: an ‘introduction to scholarly complexity’, if you will. The sophisticated metatheatre discussion also emphasises G.-G.'s larger theoretical fascination with performance. This goes beyond the editorial mandate of the series and animates the book from its opening pages, in which G.-G. asks readers to ‘[i]magine you're living in Rome around 195 bce’. He then spins a vivid vision of Roman comedy as a truly popular entertainment – one meaningful to all sectors of third- second-century Roman society, not just educated male elites. This is an opinionated book, then, with an implicit affinity for scholarship of similar viewpoint (most notably: C. Marshall, The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy [2006]; A. Richlin, Slave Theater in the Roman Republic [2017]). The position has broad, but not universal, scholarly support, and readers who come to Plautus purely by way of G.-G.'s introduction may be baffled when encountering the bluntly contradictory perspectives of other scholars in the field (e.g. M. Fontaine, Funny Words in Plautine Comedy [2010]; P. Brown, CQ 69 [2019]).
But to be clear: this is a problem of expectation, and not execution. A more ‘neutral’ approach would be bland at best, ineffective at worst. Best then to think of this book not as a one-stop ‘introduction to Curculio’, but rather, an ‘introduction to a particularly compelling way of envisioning Plautine comedy’. In the best tradition of opinionated scholarship, G.-G. offers much to think about. In a classroom, the book will certainly spark discussion, while independent readers will come away with a rich view of Roman comedy as living art; both categories of reader receive ample guidance on where to go next, courtesy of G.-G.'s thoughtful ‘Recommended Reading’ notes (pp. 161–8).
Lastly: the unpleasant matter of the bill. Fortunately, there is little to dislike. The text is well printed, with sensible layout and unobtrusive typography. Charts and figures have room to breathe, and they add genuine value to the work. Proofreading is good, with few typos. My only significant complaint applies equally well to most recent academic publications: cost. The hardcover edition, reviewed here, lists at an astonishing US$95 – absurdly expensive for a volume aimed, presumably, at undergraduates and non-specialists. This, of course, is no fault of the author. Even the publisher, Bloomsbury, tacitly acknowledges the problem by eventually releasing each volume of the series in significantly cheaper paperback editions. A good thing, too, as G.-G.'s entry deserves the widest possible audience.
