Roman Comedy VII: Plautus’s Persa, or What Just Happened?

Remember everything I told you about Roman Comedy’s use of stock characters? Well, you can forget everything I told you about Roman Comedy’s use of stock characters. In Persa, Plautus breaks that form.

Discussion Prompts

1. If you were directing this play today, how would you handle any issues of orientalism?
2. How does the daughter fit the virgo model? And how does she break it?
3. In most Roman comedies, the majority of the characters are free. What might this play say given the fact that the majority of the characters are slaves?
4. If you were directing this play today, how would you help the audience keep everything straight? Would you try to use the upending of tropes as an unsettling feature? Why or why not?
5. What biases do you need to check? No judgement. We can’t learn to look beyond our biases if we don’t acknowledge that they exist. I am strongly biased towards feminism. Shocking, I know. But that does mean I need to do better at my gut reaction when I encounter people who are not also feminists. What about you? An excellent way to learn more about your biases is to take one (or a dozen) of Harvard’s implicit bias tests. (That’s how I learned that I really do have a very strong bias towards feminism. Again. Shocking. I know.) I’ll be here when you’re ready to share.