Excerpt from The Rudens of Plautus

There are some questions concerning the ancient production of a Latin comedy that can probably never be solved. Most of these are connected with the prob lem of the music and the rendering of the lyrical metres. It is known that some of the lines written for musical accompaniment (cantica) were sung, either on or off the stage, that others were recited or chanted, against a background of music played by the ancient pipe (tibia), and the plays must have approximated to a certain extent our modern comic opera. We do not know all that we should like about the metrical reading of even the narrative lines (diverbia), or exactly how elision was treated. But aside from this, there is little as to which we are not in general well informed, even down to matters of costuming and make-up.

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