This volume is one in a series of accessible introductions to ancient plays that already features Aristophanes’ Peace and Terence's Andria edited by experts of the calibre of I.C. Storey and S.M. Goldberg. This means that part of its mission is to divulge information that is already well known to the specialist. However, this popular perspective allows C. to pursue his own laudable conviction that ancient plays must ‘first be understood and analysed as performances’ (p. x) before they can be scrutinised with the lenses of philology.
The first chapter, ‘Introduction to Plautine Comedy’, provides a résumé of the plot and gives the little details we know about the life of Plautus (pp. 2–3). C.’s categorisation of the Roman playwright as belonging ‘to the second wave of Europe's first large-scale translation project’ (p. 4) is traced back to fundamental volumes (p. 124 n. 15). Nevertheless, it is particularly in a book such as this that one wishes for a mention of the groundbreaking work by M. Bettini, Vertere: un'antropologia della traduzione nella cultura antica (2012). Further, an accurate characterisation of Italic comic traditions and of the main features of Greek New Comedy (albeit here I would have added a reference to the best overview I know, namely R. Hunter, The New Comedy of Greece and Rome [1985]), leads to a balanced delineation of the differences between Greek and Roman theatrical spaces (pp. 8–10), followed by a detailed profile of Plautus as a translator (pp. 10–13). The chapter ends with an exemplification of how Plautus intervened on his model, the lost Κληρούμενοι by Diphilus, by expanding the role of verbal artifices through his own inventiveness (pp. 13–15). Metatheatrical allusions such as ludere (ll. 685–8) are also taken as distinctive Plautine elements. In this regard, however, I am hesitant to accept that ‘Plautine metapoetics may underlie the unusual amount of attention in Casina bestowed upon Lysidamus’ cloak’, that is his pallium, and that the loss of that cloak ‘metonymically points to Plautus's creative transformation of his source’ (p. 16) into a palliata. Yet I definitely agree with C. when he claims that the male-wedding and farcical end of the play constitutes ‘a situation that recalls the bawdiness of Atellan farce or Italian mime more than Greek New Comedy’ (I would also mention the otherwise scarce obscenities that here abound) and that this may well be suggested by the emphasis laid on the adjective nouus (pp. 17–18).
The second chapter, ‘The Social-Historical Context’, deals with issues concerning the contemporary background. The military terminology often applied to the conflict between the senex and Cleostrata upholds C.’s statement that here ‘the marital and martial … neatly converge’ (p. 21). I call the character senex because he was left anonymous by Plautus. The Palatines name him Stalitio because of a misreading of 347 and 954 (cf. C. Questa's apparatus ad loc.). C. notes (p. 130 n. 4) that the name never appears in the play, but does not take into account B. Bader, Szenentitel und Szeneneinteilung bei Plautus (1970), pp. 125–7, who persuasively argued that Lysidamus was created independently by the scribe of A to fill an unpleasant gap (cf. C. Questa, ‘Maschere e funzioni nelle commedie di Plauto’, in C. Questa and R. Raffaelli [ed.], Maschere, prologhi, naufragi nella commedia plautina [1984], pp. 28–9). A precise account of the limitations imposed on married women in Roman society thoroughly explains the contrastive duet between Cleostrata and Murrina (ll. 165ff.). Interestingly, C. notes that there is no mention of Cleostrata's dowry as it would befit the role of an uxor dotata. This is a clear indication that Cleostrata, despite interpreting the actantial role of the uxor, takes on the actantial features of another role, that of the slave pulling the strings of the intrigue. This original reallocation of actantial features, however, clashes with her social status, since anthropological constraints prevented a Roman matrona from indulging in such base trickeries (cf. M. Bettini, Verso un'antropologia dell'intreccio e altri studi su Plauto [1991]). This is precisely why Plautus had to bestow so much importance upon Pardalisca (the only typo I was able to find is ‘Pardalsica’ at p. 14), a female slave who is socially allowed to perform her mistress’ schemes (see p. 97). She may therefore be labelled the ‘director’ of the action, and it is to her rather than to Chalinus that the final lines must be attributed. C. discusses the issue (pp. 77–9), but I think that C. Questa, ‘Pardalisca regista della Casina’, in R. Raffaelli and A. Tontini (ed.), Lecturae Plautinae Sarsinates. VI Casina (2002), pp. 45–60, made a decisive case in favour of Pardalisca. The depiction of the turbulent situation of women's rights in the years after the Second Punic War puts the litigation between Cleostrata and the senex into a broader perspective. Finally, the last paragraph contextualises the comic allusion to Bacchants (ll. 979–80), claiming that one could recognise the senex’s behaviour as Bacchic (p. 34), a legitimate though ultimately unnecessary assumption.
The longest chapter of the book is the third, ‘Casina in Performance’. C. accepts the analytic concept of musical arcs, usefully introduced by C.W. Marshall, The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy (2006), pp. 206–7. In his metrical outline of the comedy (p. 122), he distinguishes six musical arcs, adopting an alphabetical notation to distinguish (a) spoken iambics, (b) mixtis modis cantica and (c) recitative trochaics. However, the chapter offers an essentially scene-based analysis, with scenes often grouped together under a single title in view of their content. I broadly agree with C.’s reconstruction of Plautus’ adaptation of Diphilus and with his general characterisation of the play, so I shall limit myself to a few specific points. C. is effective in giving the reader a plausible reconstruction of costume and stage-movement. He notes (p. 41), for instance, that Olimpio (not Olympio) is ‘no doubt miming the actions he describes [at ll. 117ff.] as the actor playing Chalinus makes cringing gestures’ and rightly proposes to imagine that Chalinus dressed as a bride (ll. 964ff.) struts ‘with mock-seductive gestures’ (p. 75). C. finely interprets the significance of noua nupta as both ‘new’ and ‘strange’ bride (p. 66). Yet I do not think that the verb subolet (l. 277) ‘diverts attention to the old man's stench’ (p. 47), and I doubt that the ‘running phallic metaphor’, explicit in the obscenely Atellanic finale (ll. 908–14), starts with the mention of a sword in the paratragic suicide conceived by the senex (ll. 307–8).
The fourth chapter, ‘Main Themes’, explores crucial issues such as sexuality, food, gender and the centrality of women. C. wisely maintains that ‘it would be inadvisable to claim that Plautus or the play target(s) Roman norms of masculinity or (anachronistically) advances a feminist agenda’ (p. 91), but at the same time highlights the ‘socially subversive potential’ (p. 92) of the play with regard to categories of gender.
The fifth and last chapter, ‘Reception’, focuses on the early period of Plautus’ transmission and on modern adaptations. After Questa, Numeri innumeri (1984), pp. 23–129, it is wrong to assume that ‘Roman literary scholars began to work critically on texts only in the mid-second century ce’, and a brief account of the different transmission of the eight and the twelve comedies would have been useful. Themes and motifs derived from Casina are then investigated in the Italian Renaissance and in the modern period. C. could have followed the thread of opera buffa that leads from Beaumarchais and Da Ponte to Hoffmansthal's libretto for Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier down to the sham male-wedding of Totò in the movie Figaro qua, Figaro là (1950).
Although specialists may have something to say about the volume, we should be grateful to C., who provides a valuable introduction to such a fascinating play. His companion will undoubtedly serve well future generations of students and amateurs wishing to have a competent laugh with Plautus.
