Book description
From the fifth to the second century BC, innovative comedy drama
flourished in Greece and Rome. This collection brings together the
greatest works of Classical comedy, with two early Greek plays:
Aristophanes' bold, imaginative Birds, and Menander's The Girl from
Samos, which explores popular contemporary themes of mistaken identity
and sexual misbehaviour; and two later Roman comic plays: Plautus' The
Brothers Menaechmus - the original comedy of errors - and Terence's
bawdy yet sophisticated double love-plot, The Eunuch. Together, these
four plays demonstrate the development of Classical comedy, celebrating
its richness, variety and extraordinary legacy to modern drama.
Little is known about Aristophanes' life (c. 445BC-c. 386BC), but
there is a portrait of him in Plato's Symposium. His first comedy was
produced when he was 20 and he wrote 40 plays in the course of his life.
Erich Segal has taught Classics at Harvard, Yale and Princeton and
is currently an Honorary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He has
published widely on Greek and Roman Comedy, his latest book, The Death
of Comedy, was published in 2001. He is also the author of nine
best-selling novels.
