Episode 36

The influence of Plautus and other Roman playwrights has long been understood, but what are those influences and how did the Roman plays come to the attention of Rennaisance playwrights?

How manuscripts survived after antiquity and were rediscovered in the early Renaissance.

The growth of secular drama in Italy and the role of Duke Ercole d'Este in Ferrara

Terence Vs Plautus as the Roman plays became known and appreciated in northern Europe.

How early English plays used the Roman models and how the growing education system in Elizabethan England used Latin plays.

The influence of Plautus on Shakespeare and similarities in settings, characters and plots.

Ben Johnson's debt to Plautus