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| A comic slave, imparting some frightening news
to a prostitute and her young lover. Roman wall painting from the Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali, ca. 50-75 CE. |
Sunday, September 23, 2012
"Casina" and "The Braggart Soldier"
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My personal preference was the play Casina. I thought that the language was easier to understand and the plot was more entertaining. The plot in The Braggart Soldier was entertaining but too conniving and hard to follow. From the twin sisters to duping Pyrgopolynices the plot dragged on and was hard to keep up with. However the conclusion was much better than Casina's in the fact that there was a ending to the plot instead of a cut off. I really liked the diversity of characters in The Braggart Soldier, the variety created a lot of tension and plot twists. However I liked the characters in Casina also because they were easier to follow because they had variation in the names where the characters in The Braggart Soldier all started with a "P" creating a difficult read.
ReplyDeleteI liked both of the plays written by Plautus, but I think I may have liked the translation of Casina a little bit more. I thought that its plot personally suited my sense of humor, what with the idea of a creepy old guy trying unsuccessfully to cheat on his wife. I had no difficulty understanding it because it tended to use modern slang that I was familiar with, with words like "stud" "girlfriend" "screwed" "puke" and "horny." However, at the same time, the use of words like these made the play feel a little bit cheap. I also liked how females were the ones that held the power in the play, with Cleostrata holding all of the control. A lot of the ideas in this play reminded me of Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, which I just had to read for another class.
ReplyDeleteThe Braggart Soldier definitely had a classier feel to it, with fewer innapropriate slang words, but it still had its moments. I loved some of the lines in it; for instance, when Palaestrio says, "'Seasoned women never have to get their spices at the grocer's- their own garden grows the pepper for their sharp and spicy schemes." It was more poetic and artistic than Casina, and while it wasn't as difficult for me to comprehend as Shakespeare is, I did have more difficulty comprehending this play than the other one. The plot twists were interesting, but there were just so mny of them that it was hard to keep up at times.
I preferred Casina. The Braggart Soldier was very long and complicated, even though it had superior language. It seems like the Braggart Soldier was meant for more high class audiences, because the jokes were more eloquent than Casina's slightly crass ones that would have entertained the lower class. I definitely enjoyed Casina's silly humor and short witty jokes more. Also, like Alyssa said, I thought it was great that the women outsmarted the stereotypically lecherous men.
ReplyDeleteOut of the two plays, I definitely preferred Casina over The Braggart Soldier. Casina seemed to be a bit simpler but I thought that because of this it allowed the reader to focus more on the characterization of the actors rather than the plot. The Braggart Soldier was much more complex in plot, which made it hard to really get into the mindset of any of the characters and it showed, as there wasn't very much character development as the play progressed. However, there were several scenes that I found immensely entertaining in this play, such as the conversation between the soldier, Palaestrio, and Milphidippa. The use of aside comments throughout this scene were hilarious, although they seemed a little unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteI really found Casina much more interesting and easy to understand. The humor is more sophisticated in the Braggart Soldier, but I found that the ability to actually understand the piece was more important than how classy the humor was. I really found it hilarious that the old man reffered to the girl as his "booty", and that Alcesimus tells Lysidamus to "screw off". I just find it entertaining that the play is so relaxed and unproper. I did not like The Braggart Soldier in almost every way. I had to reread the Prologue three times just to understand what was being said. It was too complex for me to actually want to know what was happening.
ReplyDeleteCasina was by far my favorite between the two plays. Comprehension of the story was much easier and I had very little trouble keeping up with the story. The language seemed to be very modern for when the play was written though which definitely surprised me. It almost seemed as though the play was written for a modern audience rather than an audience that it would have been performed for in 200 B.C. However, the play was translated from Latin which could be why the language seems updated. Although the plot for Casina was pretty perverted, I found myself laughing at a few parts. The Braggart Soldier was very difficult to follow and although I understood a good part of the humor, some of it was over my head. Plautus must have had some fun writing Casina and he also had to have a bit of a twisted mind.
ReplyDeleteBetween the plays Casina and The Braggart Soldier, I definitely liked Casina far more than I liked The Braggart Soldier. I found myself reading and not understanding parts of The Braggart Soldier. I believe that this was because of the language used in the play. The language used in Casina was much easier to follow. As for humor, I enjoyed Casina. The language made the comedy so much better because I was able to follow the conversations. The aside comments were where most of the humor came from and I actually found myself laughing while reading this play. I agree with Olivia when she said the comments used in Casina seemed to be for a lower class compared to The Braggart Soldier where the comments were eloquent and possibly made for the upper class. The Braggart Soldier had a few humorous comments but I feel like I didn't understand some of the jokes because of the language.
ReplyDeleteThough both of these plays were quite the riveting read, I liked Casina better than the Braggart Soldier. Casina had a funny story, and it was easy to keep track of all the characters. However, I also appreciated the humour found in the Braggart Soldier. The deciding factor for me between the two plays was that the Braggart Soldier was just too long and complicated for me. If I had actually seen the play, instead of reading it, and been able to have seen these parts acted out, there's a chance I would have enjoyed it more than Casina
ReplyDeleteI'd have to say that I found Casina more purely hilarious than the Braggart Soldier, which as everyone seems to have stated previously was very dry and at the same time a little too complicated for my taste. Casina had language that flowed much better, and genuinely made me want to know what was going to happen next. While the Braggart Soldier did have moments, it was generally not as enjoyable as Casina. My favorite scene out of Casina definitely has to be the whole situation that takes place between lines 830 and 936. "I get hold of a handle, but I realized it was no sword, the shaft would have been colder..." It reminds me of some of the raunchier comedies we have today.
ReplyDelete