Plautus Plays--Stoddard

The two plays, “Casina” and “The Braggart Soldier” were pretty similar. Both were comedies that revolved around the main characters tricking a man who wanted a woman he couldn’t have while the woman wanted nothing to do with the man. In both cases the antagonist is a slave-owning man whose unearned confidence and stupidity allow him to be fooled by the much smarter main characters. I surprised myself by laughing out loud with some of the jokes that were made in these plays. My favorite was probably “Casina” because I thought it was a bit funnier. However, the play most likely to be made into a movie would definitely be “The Braggart Soldier”. It felt like the characters were given traits and scenes that the audience could connect with. Also, the way the play was written made me think that a director could do something interesting with the way they filmed it.

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