¹ That is the briefest possible introduction to my form of reader-response criticism. Standard introductory works on the subject include Suleiman, Susan R. and Inge, Crosman (eds.), The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (Princeton, 1980);CrossRefGoogle ScholarTompkins, J. P (ed.), Reader Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore, 1980);Google ScholarFreund, E, The Return of the Reader (London, 1987).Google Scholar An interesting way of looking at reader-response criticism is to watch the debate between Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish. It is, I hope, sufficient for the needs of this paper that such statements apply to texts which are generally accepted as being ‘fiction’. The extent to which it would apply to other forms of reading (e.g. of critical discourse) would be a question of considerable interest, but I do not propose to address it here. The following works will from now on be cited by name alone: Arnott, W. G, ‘Calidorus' Surprise: A Scene of Plautus' Pseudolus with an Appendix on Ballio's Birthday’, WS 95 (1982), 131–48;Google ScholarDuckworth, G. E, The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton, NJ, 1952);Google ScholarLeftvre, E, ‘Plautus-Studien I, Der Doppelte Geldkreislauf im Pseudolus’, Hermes 105 (1977), 441–54;Google ScholarSlater, N, in Plautus in Performance (Princeton, NJ, 1985);Google ScholarWillcock, M. M, Plautus: Pseudolus (Bristol, 1987);Google ScholarWiles, D, in The Masks of Menander: Sign and Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance (Cambridge, 1991);Google ScholarWilliams, G, ‘Some Problems in the Construction of Plautus' Pseudolus’, Hermes 84 (1956), 424–55;Google ScholarZwierlein, O, Zur Kritik und Exegese des Plautus, particularly Vol. III Pseudolus (Mainz and Stuttgart, 1991).Google Scholar

² See Kris, E and Kurz, O, Legend, Myth and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment (New Haven & London, 1979), passim, but particularly 43, 82. Examples of such stories may be found at Plin. N.H. 35.64, Sen. Contr. 10.5.27.Google Scholar

³ It is not, I concede, often phrased like that. It is perhaps unfair to attack an easy target, but the views of people like Norwood, G (Plautus and Terence [London, 1932]) remain influential, at least subliminally. Norwood allows Plautus the credit neither of being an effective translator at the level of entire plays, nor of being an original playwright (99).Google Scholar See also Bain, D, ‘Plautus uortit barbare: Plautus, Bacchides 526–61 and Menander, Dis exapaton 102–12’, in D., West and A. J. Woodman (eds.), Creative Imitation in Latin Literature (Cambridge, 1979), 33.Google Scholar

⁴ See Lefèvre, EStärk, E and G. Vogt-Spira, Plautus Barbarus: Sechs Kapitelzur Originalitat des Plautus (Tübingen, 1991).Google Scholar The implication that the Greek plays provide only a veneer of respectability over what is essentially a form of Atellan farce perhaps characterizes the more recent views of Lefèvre. In his article on the Pseudolus, he is still very interested in the Greek original, arguing that the Plautine version is drastically different from the Greek in dramaturgy and characterization (particularly pp. 453–4), and that this is done not through Plautine inadequacy but through a desire to concentrate on the triumph of Pseudolus. This view is I think largely accepted by what might be termed the ‘pro-Plautus’ faction, with which I would align myself. Discussion then remains as to how the play achieves this. There is no need in this regard to take up rigid positions, for it is the power of the comic text that it can achieve its goals in different ways for different people. On this matter see also Wiles, 140–4, and briefly Gratwick, A. S, Plautus: Menaechmi (Cambridge, 1993), 16.Google ScholarStärk, has argued, in Die Menaechmi des Plautus undkein griechisches Original (Tubingen, 1989), that there is in fact no Greek original for the Menaechmi. For a similar argument for the EpidicusGoogle Scholar see Goldberg, S. M, ‘Plautus' Epidicus and the Case of the Missing Original’, TAPhA 108 (1978), 81–91.Google Scholar

⁵ In this regard, the essay of Bain, op. cit. (n. 3), is important, both in itself and in the fact of its prominent position in a volume which expressly aims to investigate the relationship between Greek and Roman culture and which prefigures much later work. See now particularly Anderson, W. S, Barbarian Play: Plautus' Roman Comedy (Toronto, 1993).Google Scholar

⁶ See also the review by Gratwick of Zwierlein's first volume (on Poenulus and Curculio) in CR 43 (1993), 36–40, which is very helpful not least in pointing out that a difficulty in responding to the thesis is that Zwierlein differentiates little in his rejection of lines which many would regard as suspect and those which most would not even consider doubting.Google Scholar

⁷ Important work has been done on Plautine drama as theatrical performance, for example by Slater, , and by Wiles, , 129–46.Google Scholar

⁸ I am particularly indebted to some perceptive comments by Adrian Gratwick here.

⁹ See also Walsh, G. B, The Varieties of Enchantment (Chapel Hill & London, 1984).Google Scholar

¹⁰ The notion of the ‘play within the play’ has a long history in the traditions of drama. For a treatment relating to New and Roman Comedy, see Blansdorf, J, ‘Die Komodienintrige als Spiel im Spiel’, A&A 28 (1982), 131–54.Google Scholar

¹¹ See Kern, E, The Absolute Comic (New York, 1980), 117–208.Google Scholar

¹² Among the more famous modern theoreticians of the psychology of humour are Freud, S, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, translation of the original 1905 edition by J., Strachey (London, 1960)Google Scholar and Bergson, H, Laughter: an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (London, 1911).CrossRefGoogle Scholar There is an excellent survey of ancient and modern theories of comedy, in which the superiority theory looms largest (with ‘contrast’ or ‘cheating of expectation’ coming next) in Duckworth, particularly 305–21. This type of defence of comedy has a long and highly respectable history going back to Aristotle in the lost second book of the Poetics and in the Nicomachean Ethics (see for example 4. 1127b33–1128b4), and finds perhaps its neatest formulation in Horace's satiric programme, ridentem dicere uerum (Sat. 1.1.24). There is an extensive treatment of this and other ancient theories of comedy in Freudenburg, K, The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 52–108.Google Scholar

¹³ See Slater, 118–46, Wright, J, ‘The Transformations of Pseudolus’, TAPhA 105 (1975), 403–16,Google ScholarLowe, J. C. B, ‘The Cook Scene in Plautus' Pseudolus’, CQ 35 (1985), 411–16,CrossRefGoogle ScholarHallett, J. P, ‘Plautine Ingredients in the Performance of the Pseudolus‘, CW 87 (1993), 21–6,Google ScholarGowers, E, The Loaded Table (Oxford, 1993), 93–108.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The musical, originally a stage play by Harold S. Prince, was produced in 1966 by Melvin Frank. Up Pompeii was a television series from the same era.

¹⁵ Slater entitles his main discussion of the Pseudolus ‘Words Words Words’. See also Wright (n. 13) for the importance of ‘words’ in the play.

¹⁶ Hough, J. N, The Composition of the Pseudolus of Plautus (Lancaster, PA, 1931), Williams, , 424–55.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Lowe opens his article on the Asinaria with an excellent history of the debate on originality and contaminatio, which I shall not repeat here. See Lowe, J. C. B, ‘Aspects of Plautus' Originality in the Asinaria’, CQ 42 (1992), 152–75. In addition to the Zwierlein and Lefèvre schools referred to above (nn. 1 and 4), the range of modern critical approaches includes that of SegalCrossRefGoogle Scholar (Segal, E, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (Cambridge, MA, 1968)), who makes Plautus' originality lie in the subversive pleasure created for a Roman audience by a representation of ‘Greeking it up’, and that of the modern metatheatrists, such as Wiles and Slater, whose concerns could perhaps be characterized as based on an interest in the traditions of drama as it affects the playwright in hand, rather than on the exact relationship between Plautine and New Comic texts.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The theme of Ballio's birthday could be held to be a ‘different strand’ in the plot, but even that works towards the glorification of Pseudolus, who gets the party at the end. See Lefèvre, and Arnott. I would suggest that many, if not most, Plautine plays contain more complex plots in the sense of more action than does the Pseudolus, including for example Aul., Mil., Men., Bacch., Most. But perhaps complexity is in the eye of the beholder. Dieterle sees three intrigues in the play (those of Simo, Harpax/his master, and Ballio), but one could see them as all part of the same thing: it is Pseudolus' tongue-twisting self-display (704–6) which creates the sense of triplication. See Dieterle, A, Die Strukturelemente der Intrige in der griechish-romischen Komodie (Amsterdam, 1980), 17–18.Google Scholar

¹⁹ There is a considerable problem here with 406–8, when Pseudolus appears to know in advance what is going to happen in the ensuing scene, and to speak of it in the past tense.

²⁰ Wiles, 142

²¹ See also Gratwick, op. cit. (n. 4), 15.

²² ‘Mask’ here should be taken to stand for all the conventions and workings of a play.

²³ The old man and other dupes are often completely ignorant of what is going on: cf. Euclio in Aui., Pyrgopolynices in Mil., Sosia and, differently, Amphitruo in Amph., Theopropides in Most., to mention but a few.

²⁴ Willcock, 96, wonders whether there might once have been an expository prologue in place of or in addition to the two lines we have. Abel, K, Die Plautusprologe (Frankfurt, 1955), 15–17, defends the two lines as Plautine.Google Scholar

²⁵ Pseudolus' opening speech, which will be discussed further below, is a good example of his exhibitionist verbosity. But on another level his macrological self-expression is not redundant, for it is the point of the play. Perhaps I might suggest, further, that the very use of a slave as the main and controlling character in comedy, and as the sign for the playwright, is itself a piece of self-deprecating humour.

²⁶ See briefly Abel, op. cit. (n. 24), 16–17; and for a good discussion of the scene Slater, 119.

²⁷ Slater, 119–20, helpfully exposes the interplays of comic and paratragic ‘misery’ in this scene. He too sees Pseudolus' manipulation of tragic, paratragic and generally elevated language as consciously programmatic. Plautus stakes his claim to comic ground, but on his own terms.

²⁸ 23–4: ut opinor, quaerunt litterae hae sibi liberos:/ alia aliam scandit. There might be apun between liberos and libros here.

²⁹ So Slater, 119.

³⁰ Twenty minae is a standard price for a girl in comedy. See Ritschl, F, Opuscula Philologica II (Leipzig, 1868), 308–9.Google Scholar

³¹ See Williams, 427, where this problem is analysed as an indication of contaminatio. On the related subject of why Calidorus expresses surprise at hearing Ballio boast of having sold Phoenicium to the Macedonian, when Calidorus must already know about this from the letter, see Arnott, who argues against contaminatio here, claiming that Plautus, being, in common with other ancient playwrights, less concerned about realism than about dramatic effect, uses this surprise as a device to convey to any of the audience who missed it first time the necessary but complex information about the prior sale. See also Webster, T. B. L, Studies in Later Greek Comedy (Manchester, 1953), 190.Google Scholar

³² Lefèvre, 444, also remarks on the fact that no further mention is made of the debt to Charinus. His explanation is that it would have been sorted out in the original, but that Plautus has made changes such as this in order to allow near-complete concentration on the triumph of Pseudolus.

³³ See Williams, 435. See also Slater, 130. Lefèvre, 450–1, considers that the deceit of Simo (which he claims is not really a deceit at all) would probably not have been needed in the original, but is a Plautine invention to enhance Pseudolus. He usefully points out the balance between 508–11 and 1313–18, the forging and conclusion of the bet respectively.

³⁴ The line is excised by Zwierlein, 21–4.

³⁵ See for example Hough, op. cit. (n. 16), 76–9, Dieterle, op. cit. (n. 18), 112 and n. 414, Williams, 432–3; otherwise Slater, 134–5.

³⁶ That is, wrong on the level of reality on which he is working, although right for the ultimate working of the play.

³⁷ On which see Dieterle, op. cit. (n. 18).

³⁸ He claims not to have a plan at 366–400 and at 566–7, on which more later.

³⁹ 114–16 PS. roga me uiginti minas,/ ut me effectwum tibi quodpromisi scias./ roga, obsecro hercle. gestio promittere; 1070–3 BA. roga me uiginti minas,/ si ille hodie sit potitus muliere./ siue earn tuo gnato hodie, utpromisit, dabit./ roga, opsecro hercle. gestio promittere. The parallel is very close. 1071–3 are excised by Zwierlein.

⁴⁰ Willcock, 131: he points to a plausible parallel with Pseudolus' promise to Calidorus.

⁴¹ The fact that he is upset at having to do so, when after all he will (or should) get the money from Ballio anyway, may be ascribed to the power–relations between himself and Pseudolus, rather than to financial exactitude.

⁴² See also Lefèvre, particularly 443–6. He is even driven to drawing a diagram of the movements of money.

⁴³ Ballio also tries to make a proclamation (edictionem, 143) to his own slaves that they should celebrate his birthday and generally bring him lots of money. Since he is the villain, his proclamation will rebound on his own head when he loses money and celebration at the end.

⁴⁴ See for example Williams, 444, Webster, op. cit. (n. 31), 190, Arnott, 144; all offer variants on the view that Callipho returns as the banker for the various transactions or as the arbiter between Simo and Pseudolus, as is suggested by his support for Pseudolus' cause in 537 and his promise of 553–4 to pay u p if Simo refuses to d o so. Lefèvre, 446–50, sees the cutting out of Callipho as part of a wider removal of characters who would have been present at the end in the Greek play, but who are eclipsed by the concentration on the greatness of Pseudolus.

⁴⁵ My argument here would be by no means incompatible with there also existing a Greek play in which a character who is recognizably our Callipho did indeed have a later part to play.

⁴⁶ Incidentally also pointing to the stock nature of Simo's role as iratus senex, the angry old man—not that he plays it in a closely conventional way.

⁴⁷ See Duckworth, 247–8 on what he terms the senex as ‘helpful friend’. He also rightly points out that some fathers are indulgent, not angry, and so the iratus senex is not in practice as ‘stock’ as it is in most people's perceptions (ancient and modern).

⁴⁸ This suggestion was made by Theiler, W, ‘Zum Gefüge einiger plautinischer Komödien’, Hermes 73 (1938), 269–96, at 275.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Zwierlein, 7–13, although not raising the possibility of metatheatrical function in the Callipho scene, nevertheless also argues against contaminatio or any other messing, on the grounds that Callipho's role is simply to act as guarantor of the pact between Simo and Pseudolus.

⁵⁰ This could all be made explicit by having Callipho exit to sit in the audience, as is suggested by Görier, W, ‘Plautinisches im Pseudolus’, WJA 9 (1983), 89–105, at 98 n. 29.Google Scholar

⁵¹ In this regard, he conforms closely and programmatically to the (non-conformist) model of the hero of Old Comedy. Lack of communication serves as an example of the difference-in- sameness of comedy and tragedy: in tragedy, characters fail to communicate either through wilful manipulation of language to another's (and often their own) tragedy, as for example Aeschylus' Clytemnestra, or, more commonly, through accident and personal blindness, as for example Aeschylus' suppliants in their play, or Sophocles' Deianira in Trach.—and these failures result in tragedy. See for example Vernant, J.-P and Vidal-Naquet, P, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet loyd (New York, 1988), ch. 2, ‘Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy’. In comedy, by contrast, the hero majestically spurns the ordinary mortal need for straightforward communication—and triumphs. The use of puns and non-words in the Birds is a classic case of this, but it can be seen also in, for example, Dicaeopolis' private peace (which takes the form of wine) in Acharnians and even his sophistic ‘persuasion’ of the chorus to his point of view. In the same tradition is Pseudolus' spurning of ordinary turns of speech, for example at 123–4: PS. de istac re in oculum utrumuis conquiescito./ CA. oculum? anne in auremi PS. at hoc peruolgatumst minus. This might even be a programmatic statement of Plautine difference from Menander, whose language is indeed peruolgatum.Google Scholar

⁵² Duckworth, 105–7; Wiles, 53: ‘Everything that happens on the Greek stage is manifestly laid out for an audience's benefit. Characters tell the audience exactly what they are thinking and planning. Motivations are complex rather than concealed or withheld.’ I have not been able to consult Blundell, J, Menander and the Monologue (Göttingen, 1980);Google ScholarDenzler, B, Der Monolog bei Terenz (Zurich, 1968).Google Scholar

⁵³ Eight lines out of twenty in this song are excised by Zwierlein, but it makes little difference, except to detract from the power of Plautus.

⁵⁴ On the possibility of a need for a break here, see Hunter, R. L, The New Comedy of Greece and Rome (Cambridge, 1985), 38. He rightly comments that the metatheatricality of the play at this point in particular makes the contrived break and the reference to the flute-player ‘stylistically integrated and less surprising than it would be in many other contexts’. Paradoxically, Pseudolus creates the dramatic illusion by breaking it. See also Slater, 132 and n. 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁵ According to Slater, 125, it is unsuccessful because it is Calidorus' idea, not Pseudolus'.

⁵⁶ This passage will be discussed further below.

⁵⁷ The girl, who began the play for Pseudolus lying stretched out in the wax, is now to be found in a letter which is also a horn of plenty. Link this with the silvery/wooden greeting joke (45–8) and Ballio's reference to the silvery girl (347).

⁵⁸ By this last I mean, in brief, that by associating himself with a character who is not only a slave but also so extreme as to be comic, Plautus can both claim poetic greatness and obviate the risk of offending his audience by his arrogance. These notions of decorum and the right way to boast come into their own with the Augustans, with their altered political situation and their Callimachean allegiance.

⁵⁹ See above.

⁶⁰ The journal's referee caps this joke, by wondering whether this discussion about originality and poetic invention could itself have come from the Greek original.

⁶¹ Indeed, the increase in the role of the slave is one of those features in late Aristophanes and Euripides which combine to sow the seeds of New Comedy. Leftvre suggests in passing that in the original the emphasis would have been on the love-theme and the winning of the girl, rather than the slave's part in it. We might even say that in Plautus' version, by contrast, the love-theme is a hook on which to hang the exposition of Pseudolus.

⁶² This example looks the most promising for anyone searching for clever slaves in Menander, since the master is threatening punishment for t he slave's trickery, and t he slave clearly talks about deceiving his master in a way that looks generically comic. But t o o little remains to build much on it. A determined case for the presence of something quite like the Plautine clever slave in Greek comedy has been made by Harsh, P. W, ‘The Intriguing Slave in Greek Comedy’, TAPhA 86 (1955), 135–42, but I remain unconvinced that his examples show more than a seed out of which the Plautine tree could be said to have grown.Google Scholar

⁶³ Duckworth, 28: ‘[t]he slave [in Menander] takes part in the action but is not the intriguing slave of Plautine comedy.’ He rightly says that we do not know either way how other New Comic playwrights used the slave.

⁶⁴ A bilingual joke, depending on an audience who knew a bit of Greek and would appreciate it. I think some of them were probably up to it… Play across syllable length is not unknown in antiquity, although I admit this requires a slightly bigger change than between long and short versions of the same vowel. See Ahl, F, Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Ithaca and London, 1985), 15.Google Scholar Recognition of the wordplay with dolus goes back at least to Schmidt, K, ‘Griechische Personennamen bei Plautus’, Hermes 37 (1902), 353–90, at 381.Google ScholarBarton, A, The Names of Comedy (Oxford, 1990), 155, discussing the importance of names in identity, describes Pseudolus as a ‘transparently speaking name’ for a ‘clever slave who assumef[s] a false identity to trick an old master’. She does not, however, expressly say what she thinks the name says. Actually Pseudolus only performs the role she mentions in so far as Simia may be seen as an extension of him, but I am here interested in the power of the name, rather than Barton's particular argument.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Very fruitful work on the otherness and sameness of Plautus and Greek comedy has been done by Anderson, op. cit. (n. 5), particularly the first two chapters and, for the romanitas of Plautus' plays, the last.

⁶⁶ See Fantham, E, Comparative Studies in Republican Latin Imagery (Toronto, 1972). See Slater, 119 for Plautus using programmatic language to define his own work as comedy by opposition to tragedy.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Presumably the reference is to the Horse, expressed like this for the sake of the parallel with Pseudolus' own name. See also Slater, 140.

⁶⁸ See Arnott, and Lefèvre.

⁶⁹ It is actually not all that common to have someone coming out of the party, since in Roman comedies in particular the main point is to get everyone off stage in order to end the show. That does not mean it did not happen in our hypothesized play, of course. It is possible that when in Cist, the epilogue says to the audience ‘you needn't expect anyone to come back out again—that's the end’ it is a joke on the fact that in Greek plays someone sometimes or often did come back out after the general going in. In that play, at any rate, the business is rather unfinished, and it may be that Plautus is jokingly pointing out that he is not going to ‘finish it off’ (and follow the Greek?). A similar joke is made through Ballio's last words in our play that he will not be reappearing, perhaps also suggesting that from our knowledge of the Greek original or of Greek plays' story-patterns generally we expect him back.

⁷⁰ We might perhaps compare the final act of Menander's Samia, where the typical Menandrian slave Parmenon tries unsuccessfully to persuade the sulking Moschion to come in to the party (his own wedding). Finally the father, Demeas, takes control, and, instead of the begging Moschion sought, simply gets on with the wedding so that the young man, looking decidedly foolish, has to comply.

⁷¹ Comic reconciliation can go a long way in these scenes: at the end of Plautus' Rudens the pimp Labrax, who (as is his role) has been the bad guy throughout the play, is invited in to supper by the restored father Daemones.

⁷² Cf. the end of Plaut. Bacch., where the iratus senex Nicobulus is persuaded to come in and drink at the Bacchides' house by the prostitutes and by the rather more lepidus senex Philoxenus. Persa, a complicated instance to consider because it lacks ‘respectable’ characters, ends with the pimp knocked about and drummed into the party by slave and prostitute (with help from other disreputables).

⁷³ That is not to say, of course, that there are not Roman plays ending with parties. Certainly there are, and Stichus, for example, ends with a great deal of general and rather chaotic celebration: but a great many do not.

⁷⁴ In general terms the closest parallel to the end of Pseudolus is that of Epidicus, where the master is forced to entreat the slave to allow him to grant him his freedom. While there is undoubtedly humour and play on power-relations there, it is nothing compared to that in our play, for one cannot imagine anyone freeing Pseudolus: he is too powerful. It has been acknowledged that the most Plautine of Plautine slaves are not after freedom but power. See Segal, op. cit. (n. 17), particularly ch. 4.

⁷⁵ It works for Pseudolus as Plautus even if not for Plautus himself.

⁷⁶ For wine, perhaps the best example is Acharnians where we have not only the wine-skins as physical peace treaties (and the association between peace and comedy is also very strong) but also the vine prop which injures the anti-comic (and -peace) general Lamachus: the comic Dionysus is against him. For dancing, we might compare the spectacular ending of Wasps, wit modern dances (= comedies) compared with old ones, with the display of the sons of Carcinus, and the leaping vigour of the aged Philocleon.

⁷⁷ If there is any justification in the belief that the ‘original’ of the Pseudolus was by Menander himself, then an extra dimension would be added to such a programmatic statement. For the view, ‘although we have no direct internal or external evidence’, see Webster, op. cit. (n. 31), 189.

⁷⁸ In the preceding line, he describes the dances as Ionic: quippe ego qui probe Ionica perdidici—an ‘immodest’ dance, according to Willcock ad loc, but it would be a Greek one also.

⁷⁹ idfuit nenia ludo (1278b). Slater, 146, makes the useful comparison with the ending of Shakespeare's Tempest, nenia, a funeral dirge, also means ‘trifles’ and so is a suitable word for comedy.

⁸⁰ On messing as a programmatic term for comic (and particularly Roman comic) composition see Gowers, op. cit. (n. 13), 68, and Gratwick, A. S, ‘Drama’, in Kenney, E. J. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature II: Latin Literature (Cambridge, 1982), 77–137, at 117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸¹ Later Pseudolus changes his cloak, puts the almost messed one aside, and comes out to sober up. Perhaps, since he is putting aside cloak, dance, and wine, he is indicating the end of the play?

⁸² I might go so far as to suggest that the emphasis on Pseudolus' feet in the opening lines of this scene could hint at metrical feet. Plautine lyric metres are notoriously hard to follow: is that because they are drunk? The metres of this canticum are, as Willcock drily remarks, very mixed.