Mostellaria (Modern School Classics) [Hardcover]

This is a review of Frank R. Merrill's commentary on Plautus' Mostellaria for the Bristol Classical Press series. Merrill states in his preface that "this edition of the Mostellaria is conceived as a first reader in Roman comedy", and it is very clear that he has endeavored to make this commentary as user friendly as possible and has on the whole succeeded in doing so. The commentary has many helpful features: a complete and well-formulated glossary in the back, a brief general introduction to Plautus and ancient comedy, a more focused introduction to the Mostellaria itself with plot summaries of each act, an explanation of Plautine meter, and a lengthy discussion (really almost a reference grammar) of Plautine morphology and style (including archaic forms, idioms with subordinate clauses and case usages, syllable quantities, and a helpful list of easily confused words). Each individual paragraph/section of the introduction is also marked with a number, a novel expedient that eliminates the need for lengthy notes in the commentary proper by referring the reader to the relevant grammatical explanation in the introduction by its number. There are 105 such sections in total, and they constitute a remarkably concise and handy account of many of the idiosyncrasies of Plautine Latin.

The commentary proper occupies about 45 pages of the book, and the notes are almost entirely geared towards explaining the grammar, morphology, syntax, and meaning of the Latin. There is thus no discussion of parallels in other Plautine plays or scholarship on the Mostellaria. Merrill in general does an excellent job of anticipating the reader's difficulties and takes particular care to point out potentially tricky words (for example, he will tell the reader that "oppido" is the adverb and not the noun) and to explain obscure puns and jokes. There were only a couple of occasions where I could have wished that the commentator had provided more grammatical assistance than he did.

Merrill discusses the textual criticism on the play in the introduction and in two appendices at the end of the book. One appendix consists of a concordance that records where his text differs from the standard OCT edition of Lindsay, and the other consists of a separate commentary of textual notes on the play. Merrill has adopted the elegant expedient of italicizing the Latin words/lines/phrases in the play that are referred to in textual notes, making it easy for the more advanced reader to keep track of Merrill's philological engagement with the text of the play.

Overall, this is a very useful and sophisticated commentary on the Mostellaria. It certainly contains far more than one would expect to find in a "schoolboy" edition, and although its tone and language hit a fairly advanced register that some beginning students might find intimidating, I think the exceptionally good organization and clarity that characterizes every aspect of the book will allow anyone who has had at least 2-3 years of Latin to take some profit, and quite possibly a great deal of profit, from using it. Of the play itself, what struck me most was the vividness of its characterization. Each of the characters seemed to transcend the stock archetype and attain a surprising degree of individuality and a kind of realism that counterbalances the completely unrealistic and often unresolved plot elements of the drama. The servus callidus in particular is perhaps nowhere else more compellingly realized than here in the character Tranio, who features in many comic set pieces that even by themselves more than repay the time and effort invested in reading the play.