ABSTRACT
The comedies of Plautus and Terence occupied a central place in sixteenth-century education in England, as in continental Europe: students learnt tags from both authors, read their plays at least in extracts, and took part in performances of entire plays. This chapter draws the most significant cases, in terms both of verbal echoes and of similarities in plot construction, to show how thoroughly embedded Latin comedy was in the developing dramatic culture of the period. Echoes of Plautus and Terence are also found in works not based on Italian models, for instance in two plays written in the middle of the century, perhaps both in the early 1550s, and perhaps both by the same author, Nicholas Udall. The main plot-line is based on Plautus's Menaechmi, about two identical twin brothers who have been separated since early childhood and who get mistaken for one another, with all sorts of confusions ensuing, because no one realizes there are two of them.
