Terence: Hecyra

Commentary providing firm grounding in matters of language and text while addressing major literary, dramatic and historical questions.

Terence (Author), Sander M. Goldberg (Edited by)

9780521896924, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 November 2013

230 pages
22.2 x 14.3 x 1.8 cm, 0.41 kg

'This commentary has profited from [Goldberg's] intimate knowledge of Greek and Roman comedy and ancient performance practice … It will clearly become the new standard commentary of this play.' Ortwin Knorr, Willamette University

Terence's Hecyra raises social, literary and theatrical issues of great interest to modern students of Roman comedy and, indeed, of Roman culture more broadly. The play pays strikingly close attention to the domestic problems of women and experiments boldly with traditional comic forms, not only in its creation of anticipatory suspense, but through its variations on traditional situations and roles and its metatheatrical qualities. In addition, Terence's response in his prologues to the play's two putative failures is important, if tendentious, evidence for the mechanics of theatrical performance in the second century, especially the conjunction of theatrical and gladiatorial shows. This edition opens the play's many interpretive challenges to wider scrutiny while remaining attentive to the linguistic needs of students at all levels.

Introduction
Text
Commentary
Appendix I: Philumena's pregnancy
Appendix II: Greek analogues.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]