Plautus Casina vs Plautus The Braggart Soldier - Michael Kachanyuk

Casina and The Braggart Soldier are two plays written by Plautus. Both plays are comedies and share some similarities, but they also have some differences. 

Casina is a play about a young man named Euthynicus who is in love with a slave named Casina. However, Euthynicus's father Lysidamus, is also in love with Casina and wants to marry her himself. So he sends his son out of the country and uses his slave Olympio to marry Casina so he could secretly have an affair with Casina while being married to his wife Cleostrata. Cleostrata finds out about her husbands attempt and tries to marry Casina to her slave, Chalinus, who would be stand in for Euthynicus until his return from the country. The play revolves around the various schemes and plots that the characters come up with to try to get what they want.
 
The Braggart Soldier, on the other hand, is about a soldier named Pyrgopolynices who is boastful and arrogant. He has kidnapped a young woman named Philocomasium, who is in love with a young man named Pleusicles. A slave named Palaestrio ends up finding Philocomasium and calls for his master to try and plan a way to reunite her with Pleusicles. 

Both plays share some similarities. For example, they both involve characters who are trying to get what they want through various schemes and plots. They also both involve characters who are in love with someone they cannot have. 

However, there are also some differences between the two plays. For example, Casina is set in Athens, while The Braggart Soldier is set in Ephesus. Additionally, Casina involves more characters than The Braggart Soldier does. Finally, while both plays are comedies, they have different tones: Casina is more lighthearted, while The Braggart Soldier is more satirical.

I personally enjoyed Casina more for its lighthearted comedy but I believe The Braggart Soldier has a higher chance becoming a movie due to its more romantical ending of the two young lovers being together while in Casina we only get a brief epilogue of Euthynicus coming back to marry Casina.

- Michael Kachanyuk

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