Ancient Roman theatre

I was doing some reading today for my Theatre history class and the book says that Roman New Comedy eliminated the Chorus, added musical accompaniment to the dialogue, emphasis on eavesdropping that leads to misunderstandings and complications. Then it goes into Plautus and says much of his dialogue was set to music and sung. Are these the beginnings of Opera or of Musical theatre? If it is the later then its funny since Plautus's plays inspired Rodgers and Hart to write Boys from Syracuse and Sondheim and Company to write Forum. What are your thoughts?

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As a Classics: Greek and Latin major, I feel I should answer this.

Greek theatre was developed before Roman theatre. The Greeks created the idea of a chorus, which sang sort of in between scenes and commented on the action or on current topics. It was set to music, but modern scholars don't know what the music sounded like (no tape recorders back then). Further back, you have the epic traditions of Homer, The Iliad and the Odyssey. These were recited, not written down until much later. They probably had a musical component with them to help pass on the oral tradition. Greek poetry, comedies and tragedies were written in meter (free verse did not exist), so words do follow a set metrical pattern based on long and short syllables. Then the Romans came in and copied everything.

As for The Boys from Syracuse, its based more on Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors than the original Plautus play Menaechmi, which had only one set of twins. Forum is borrowed directly from works of Plautus, though Sondheim and Co. combined many elements from different comedies.

Updated On: 9/11/05 at 01:39 PM