825 Stürner, F. 2011. Monologe Bei Plautus

De novis libris iudicia / T.J. Moore / Mnemosyne 65 (2012) 825-827 825 Stürner, F. 2011. Monologe bei Plautus: Ein Beitrag zur Dramaturgie der hellenistisch- römischen Komödie (Hermes Einzelschriften 103). Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag. 273 p. €55.00 (pb). ISBN 9783515098502. As Ferdinand Stürner points out in his preface, monographs have been dedicated to the monologues of Menander (Bundell, J. 1980. Menander and the Monologue (Göttingen)) and Terence (Denzler, B. 1968. Der Monolog bei Terenz (Zurich)), but the monologues of Plautus have received no signifĳicant comprehensive study since Friedrich Leo’s Der Monolog im Drama (Berlin, 1908). Stürner’s book does an excel- lent job of fĳilling this gap. The book, a revision of Stürner’s 2008 Freiburg dissertation, written under Eckard Lefèvre, is decidedly a product of what might be called Lefèvre’s “Freiburg School”. Like Lefèvre and many of his students, Stürner dedicates much of his book to demonstrating how Plautus is diffferent from his Greek originals and how those diffferences are primarily the result of the influence on Plautus of the Italian tradition of improvisatory farce exemplifĳied by mime and the Atellana. For those who, like this reviewer, are sympathetic to the aims, assumptions, and methods of the “Freiburg School”, these arguments are compelling and enlightening. Even readers more skeptical about the importance of the farcical tradition, the pseudo- improvisatory nature of Plautine drama, or our ability to reconstruct lost Greek originals, however, will fĳind much of value in Stürner’s work. Stürner avoids the excesses sometimes produced by scholars determined to fĳind Italian farce in all of Plautus, and his speculations about Plautus’ changes to his Greek models are con- sistently cautious and well reasoned. And while the “originality” question is at the core of his project, along the way he offfers numerous important observations that move well beyond the question of what Plautus did to his Greek sources. After a review of works that have dealt with Plautus’ monologues in one way or another, Stürner addresses theoretical issues about just what monologues do, both in theater in general and in ancient drama in particular. He then provides and discusses a number of statistics on Plautus’ use of monologues. Next, building on earlier work, he establishes a set of categories based on the monologues’ content, role in the plot, relationship to entrances and exits, and degrees and nature of eavesdropping. He then examines the relationship between monologues and the division of roles between actors, characterization, and metatheater, and the cumu- lative structure, opening with a sententia, of many Plautine monologues. Most of the last third of the book is dedicated to detailed analysis of each of the monologues in Amphitruo, Bacchides, Cistellaria, Stichus, and Aulularia. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/1568525X-12341296 826 De novis libris iudicia / T.J. Moore / Mnemosyne 65 (2012) 825-827 Stürner’s seven principal observations, listed in his conclusion, bear repeating: 1. It is often assumed that Plautus made greater use of the monologue than did Menander or Terence. In fact, however, both Menander and Terence have a greater percentage of monologues and a greater number of monologues per play than Plautus. Plautus’ monologues tend to be longer, however, reflecting Plautus’ greater willingness to stop the action and indulge in the pleasure of the theatrical moment. The number of monologues varies greatly from play to play: for example, monologues make up about a third of Aulularia, but only six per- cent of Asinaria. The diffferences between plays result not from the chronology of the plays or the use of diffferent Greek sources, but from Plautus’ aims in dif- ferent comedies. Stürner’s analyses of fĳive plays especially rich in monologues demonstrate this fact well, as one sees, for example, in the importance of monologues in characterizing Euclio in Aulularia and distinguishing gods and mor- tals in Amphitruo. 2. Plautus offfers more monologues than Menander or Terence that have very little direct relevance to the surrounding plot. Most notable in this respect are monologues of slaves and parasites. 3. Plautus has a greater fondness than Menander or Terence for “entrance-exit” monologues, in which an entire scene consists of a monologue; and for long monologues overheard by others, in which the playwright’s flouting of verisimilitude is especially blatant. 4. In contrast to Menander and Terence, Plautus likes unmotivated overheard monologues, which he presents as a kind of “play within the play”. 5. Plautus’ characters often use monologues as a method of presenting themselves to the audience, especially as representatives of a comic type, rather than for inner reflection. 6. The monologue for Plautus is a means of bringing author, actor, and spectators together: any pretense—such as is often found in Menander and Terence—that monologue speakers are not addressing the audience is abandoned. 7. Plautus was a master at using monologues to manipulate audience response to the characters and actions on stage. As was noted above, Stürner attributes the diffferences between Plautus and Menander and Terence to the influence of Italian farce, where, just as in the later commedia dell’arte and other farcical traditions, verisimilitude is not valued, the individual theatrical moment takes precedence over the plot as a whole, and self- presentation via monologues plays an important role. Stürner concludes that Plau- tus is in fact more “modern” than Menander and Terence: his audience-centered .

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