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Terence: Brothers

Terence: Brothers

Charles Mercier

1998 • 0-941051-72-2 • paper • 100 pages •  5 ½ x 8 ½  •  $9.95

A new English translation, with introductory material and suggestions for further reading. The play has an accompanying video performance of Brothers: A Video by the Terence Project based on the Mercier translation. This excellent video production provides a visual display of the effectiveness of Roman comedy. In English. (NTSC)

| About the Author | Table of Contents | Ancillaries | Preface | Review |

 Author                                                     

Charles Mercier

 Table of Contents                                      

Preface
Introduction
    Terence and the ancient comic tradition
    Production
    Terence's Brothers
    Suggestions for further reading
    A video production of Terence's Brothers
Terence: Brothers

 Ancillaries                                                 

Brothers: A Video

By the Terence Project. Distributed by Focus

1998 • 0-941051-73-0 • VHS Video • in English  •  $29.95

 Preface                                                     

      Brothers by Terence was first produced in Rome in Latin in 160 B.C.E. Its original title was not Fratres, but Adelphoe , the title of the Greek comedy by Menander that Terence here translates and adapts. Terence preferred Greek titles. This translation began as the script for a film of the play, the inaugural effort of the Terence Project. It was meant to be performed, and tries to communicate concretely the social realities the play represents and the trains of thoughts of its characters. It is in prose, not verse, but lines were divided to help the actors grasp rhetorical units. Rather than attempt to approximate in any way the original verse forms, it indicates the kind of delivery the original verse form implies, on which more in the introduction.

      Brothers deals with questions of perennial interest: how best to raise children? how to give self-disinterested moral advice? It also presents elements that to an audience distanced by more than 2100 years may seem inappropriate to comedy. How funny is rape? How funny is slavery? The introduction, meant for those reading Terence for the first time, presents him not so much as intricate plotter or provider of holiday entertainment for an audience who wanted to leave their mental faculties at home (which I don’t deny he was), but as a playwright writing in a comic tradition that enabled him to represent his city critically with some realism. Terence’s comedies invite their audience to question the violence they occasionally represent: how funny the comedy may be is another matter.

      The introduction draws almost entirely from the work of others; it seemed best to forego formal acknowledgment of that in footnotes and instead invite exploration of the suggestions for further reading.

      The translation is based for the most part on the Latin text of R. H. Martin (Cambridge, 1976).
 

 Review                                                      

The Terence Project represents a major advance in the study of Roman comedy… The video creates an opportunity to deal with Terence on the level of performance that is new and different and potentially quite significant… There is nothing quite comparable…  to stimulate intelligent classroom discussion.

-- Sander Goldberg, UCLA