Baldwin’s combination of impressive research and sometimes frankly wonky judgment erected a monument to the virtues and vices of source criticism. 1 In formidable positivist fashion, Baldwin used documentary evidence to establish the curricula of Tudor grammar schools, asserted Terence as the more influential Roman comic dramatist, and ultimately attempted to trace the compositional genetics of nearly every element of The Comedy of Errors. Allied in approach with studies by Robert Miola and Wolfgang Riehle from the 1990s, the author offers an improvement upon rather than a challenge to the three massive and important tomes by T.W. Hardin aims to identify key Plautine elements of plot structure and characterization, with occasional remarks that said element is present in, attenuated in, or absent from Terentian or native drama, as well as texts inspired by Plautus from Italian and northern European intermediaries. The result is a catalogue of generalized comparanda in texts, providing a useful corrective for colleagues in English and theater who ignore or misrepresent Roman comedy based on facile handbooks, but ultimately offering a somewhat bookish and superficial account of the English reception of Plautus. Yet despite the book’s premise that we value performance equally with reading, it neglects to engage with recent advances in performance criticism, specifically the study of original practices in Early Modern and Roman theater. Many paragraphs cite half-a-dozen Roman and early modern plays as instances of parallel phenomena, an approach to comparative literature that seeks to convince through quantity rather than quality. The author supports his claim through rapid, descriptive survey rather than nuanced, deep explication.
![source for plautus menaechmi source for plautus menaechmi](http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/comediens/Plaute/men.gif)
In short, Hardin argues that it was “Plautus, not Terence, who did the most to legitimize comedy as a serious art during the Renaissance” (p.5). The progress of Plautine drama varied in pace throughout different regions of Europe, but as priorities shifted from reading to performing classical comedy, the spectacular if scurrilous theatricality of Plautus supplanted the smooth safety of Terence.
![source for plautus menaechmi source for plautus menaechmi](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FsG5LDVx-vQ/WQtYqeekbEI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/cMw-524pz4cFZ4hyJP2VPGoxYTte9HTYwCLcB/s1600/Comedy%2Bof%2BErrors%2B17%2B%25286%2Bof%2B64%2529.jpg)
The book’s central thesis is almost certainly correct: after the rediscovery of twelve scripts of Plautus in 1428, early modern comedy became decreasingly Terentian, increasingly Plautine.