Provides a comprehensive critical engagement with Roman comedy and its reception presented by leading international scholars in accessible and up-to-date chapters.

List of extant plays by Plautus and Terence; Introduction: Roman comedy Alison Sharrock; Part I. The World of Roman Comedy: 1. Plautus and Terence in their Roman contexts Gesine Manuwald; 2. Native Italian drama and its influence on Plautus Costas Panayotakis; 3. Roman comedy and the poetics of adaptation Mario Telò; 4. The politics of Roman comedy Robert Germany; Part II. The Fabric of Roman Comedy: 5. Stage action in Roman comedy C. W. Marshall; 6. Music and metre Timothy J. Moore; 7. Comic technique Isabella Tardin Cardoso; 8. Metatheatre David Christenson; 9. The language of Roman comedy Evangelos Karakasis; Part III. The Sociology of Roman Comedy: 10. Fathers and sons Martin T. Dinter; 11. Slaves and Roman comedy William Fitzgerald; 12. Mothers and whores Dorota Dutsch; 13. Gods and Roman comedy Anna Clark; 14. Legal laughter Andreas Bartholomä; 15. Family finances Elaine Fantham; Part IV. The Reception of Roman Comedy: 16. The reception of Republican comedy in antiquity Gesine Manuwald; 17. The manuscripts and illustration of Plautus and Terence Beatrice Radden Keefe; 18. The anti-Terentian dramas of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim Marek Thue Kretschmer; 19. Roman comedy in early modern England Robert S. Miola; 20. Roman comedy in early modern Italy and France Céline Candiard; 21. Roman comedy in Germany (from humanism to Lessing) Florian Hurka; 22. Roman comedy on stage and screen in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Céline Candiard.