ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of theatre, western comedies have been appropriated, re-constructed and revitalized for their own time. Symptomatic of this is the fact that the earliest extant scripts of Roman comedy, those of Plautus (254–184 BC), were dubbed ‘Fabula Palliata’ (plays in Greek clothing). Much contemporary theory of performance translation centres around this notion of the creation of a new framework of performance where the boundaries of two cultures blur in a hybrid fusion of time and space. However, when we strip away the playwright’s unique comedic language from a play that is rooted in the past, a play that is in many ways a new iteration of an ongoing story, whose comedy is it we are translating? Using the character of the miser in Plautus’ Aulularia (c. 195 BC), Molière’s L’Avare (1668) and David Johnston’s translation of the Molière play, The Miser (2010), this article not only discusses how echoes of the past shape modern performance, but how adaptation of comedic material can alter our perception of its past that remains an intrinsic and living part of ourselves.
