This volume provides a substantial catalogue of dramatic spaces in the works of Menander, Plautus, and Terence through its four main chapters. Philippides defines and identifies the many different types of spaces that appear in Menander’s comedy and Roman comedy, ranging from scenic to imaginary space. As the author points out, no monograph has been fully dedicated to space in this genre (11), marking this as a long-overdue addition to the study of Greek New Comedy and Roman comedy. As evidenced by the growing interest in space in these genres,[1] this monograph for De Gruyter’s Trends in Classics arrives at a suitable time. Yet the book does not offer an overarching argument and rather supplies exempla for each of the author’s proposed spatial categories. As a result, the book serves more as a starting point than a definitive study of the topic.
In the introduction, Philippides lays out her theoretical approach, drawing largely from Rush Rehm’s The Play of Space: Spatial Transformations in Greek Tragedy (Princeton, 2002), and making explicit her interests “in understanding and interpreting the dramatic texts as texts” (4). As such, the focus remains on the spaces that appear within the plays themselves, largely excluding the performance venue or audience space. Philippides’ approach to space follows two paths. The first half of the book explores those physical spaces that make up the stage: scenic and extra-scenic space. In addition, Philippides considers “stage space,” but notes that this space is standardized for New Comedy and the palliata. Therefore, the text and the play’s setting (the façade, onstage altar, and textual references) must help transform a standard stage into the specific location of each play. Extra-scenic spaces are those that lie behind the scaena or are contiguous with it, such as the interior of houses and unseen places like the forum or agora. Philippides helpfully uses prologues from several plays to help show how the playwrights transform stage space into scenic space. These broad categories are useful, and Philippides breaks them down further into subcategories, such as distinguishing between extra-scenic spaces that are contiguous to the stage (like a forum) and “distanced spaces” (a term again borrowed from Rehm), such as foreign cities that aren’t easily accessible.
The second path, as Philippides explains in the introduction, approaches space through a more conceptual or theoretical lens, exploring the metatheatrical and symbolic dimensions of space that rely on an actor’s movements or a character’s status, character type, and gender to evoke particular spatial resonances. Among this category are referential or gestural, “eremetic” (deserted or isolated), men’s and women’s, and imaginary spaces. Referential and gestural space, inspired by the work of Patrice Pavis and Gay McAuley,[2] put focus on the movements of an actor and how they change the stage space. One final, useful stipulation from the introduction is Philippides’ distinction between enacted and narrated scenes. Since a lot of action happens in extra-scenic space, it is crucial to view this space through the words of characters on the stage.
After the introduction, the monograph is made up of four chapters, two of which (Chapters 1 and 3) are substantially longer than the other two: scenic and extra-scenic space in the narrower sense; referential space; scenic and extra-scenic space in the broader sense; and imaginary space. Each chapter is broken down into clearly signposted subsections that focus on particular aspects of the chosen space; e.g., under Scenic and Extra-scenic space in the narrower sense, the first subheading is “The Stage Door.” Each subsection is then made up of targeted case studies of several plays, through which Philippides demonstrates these types of spaces across the three playwrights. Within the body of these chapters, the strength of Philippides’ research is the number of scenes and plays she touches upon. The most compelling identification of space comes in Chapter 1, where Philippides distinguishes distanced space—spaces beyond those accessible from the stage, e.g., the battlefield in Aspis—temporally, by dividing it into categories of “before,” “now,” and “after.” This leads to an affiliation between distanced space, rape, and memory in the genre, culminating in the category of “remembered space.” Usually, remembered space is evoked by a survivor of rape or an adult who was kidnapped as a child, such as Planesium in Plautus’ Curculio. Here, Philippides draws intriguing connections between space and memory in this genre and how playwrights create convincingly lived-in worlds.
In the second half of the monograph, Philippides turns to theatrical approaches, still relying on Rehm’s designations for tragedy. Chapter 2 provides details on how actors could make the stage seem bigger through their blocking and acting, such as how the actors playing Ampelisca and Palaestra in Plautus’ Rudens must pretend to search for one another on an abandoned shore. In Chapters 2 through 4, however, Philippides is not entirely successful in reconciling Rehm’s approach to tragic spaces with comic spaces. In Chapter 3, she explores “eremetic” space—in respect to comedy, this refers to spaces that are not the traditional street in an Athenian neighborhood—and the space of return (nostos). Both categories, derived from Rehm’s work, do not fit seamlessly into the comic landscape due to the distinct intentions, conventions, and traditional plots of the respective dramas. For example, the total isolation of the cave of Philoctetes or the place of Antigone’s death do not have strong parallels in Greek New Comedy or the palliata. Likewise, while Philippides rightly investigates the many journeys, homecomings, returns, and departures of comedy, further development of this framework to distinguish it from tragedy could pay great dividends.
Chapter 3 also deals with “men’s and women’s” spaces, an intriguing category, given the gender dynamics of the two genres. In particular. Philippides centers women’s spaces, which she loosely defines as the interiors of houses and, sometimes, on stage, when playwrights bring interior spaces outside, such as the dressing scene in Plautus’ Mostellaria (154–247). Here again, clearer delineation between men’s and women’s spaces, and more nuanced justification for defining women’s space as the interior, is warranted. Though Philippides’ definition is not necessarily incorrect, a more through grounding in the gender-spatial ideologies of the Greco-Roman world would help substantiate her definitions and provide a stronger foundation for readers. Nevertheless, Philippides introduces intriguing questions about how the playwrights frame interactions between male and female characters on stage and how the audience should interpret the invasive presence of one in the other’s spaces, as with Demeas’ overhearing the women of his household in Menander’s Samia (219–266) and Artemona’s interruption of the symposium led by her husband in Plautus’ Asinaria (828–941) to show Plautus stages female invasion of a male space.
The final chapter, on imaginary space, is strong and clearly defines how characters invent spaces “that metaphorically assume a new appearance, either via the imagination or machinations of certain characters or on account of lovers’ despair” (166). As invention and deceit are hallmarks of these genres, especially the palliata, Philippides creates a rich foundation for further exploring how audiences, both internal and external, might approach these spaces that do not actually exist. The brevity of this chapter belies the room for further exploration and even more illustrative examples, such as the many imaginary spaces of Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus, the exchanges between Sosia and Mercury in Plautus’ Amphitruo, or the choragus scene of Plautus’ Curculio (462–486). After a brief epilogue, an addendum offers a reading of the opening of Plautus’ Captivi, arguing that the prisoners stay on stage for the entirety of Act I. Surprisingly, however, this reading does not take advantage of the methodology developed throughout the body of the monograph, instead relying on a close textual reading, a missed opportunity to drive home the value of the book’s lens of analysis.
Overall, this volume provides a substantial sourcebook for scholars to comb through the various uses of space in both Greek New Comedy and fabula palliata. Philippides compiles numerous clearly labeled examples that allow for easy revisitation and seamless incorporation into scholarly conversation. In the primary focus of the study—that is, creating a stable of exempla of different uses of space in Menander, Plautus, and Terence—Philippides is successful, though future publications will be tasked with integrating her ideas more thoroughly into the scholarly discourse.[3] As an early step into exploring the spaces of New Comedy, it is a sizeable one, but one that leaves substantial room for other scholars to build on.
Notes
[1] E.g., N. Slater, Fictions of Space from Old to New Comedy (Routledge, 2020); D. Menon, “Travels through the Foreign Imaginary on the Plautine Stage” (diss. University of California Santa Barbara, 2020); R. Mazzara, “Plautinopolis: Imagination and Representation in Plautus’ Roman Comedy” (diss. University of Toronto, 2021); Mitch Brown Menander and the Birth of Domestic Drama (Wisconsin, 2024).
[2] Patrice Pavis, Dictionary of the Theatre (Toronto, 1998) and Analyzing Performance: Theater, Dance, and Film (Ann Arbor, 2003); Gay McAuley, Space in Performance: Making Meaning in Theatre (Ann Arbor, 2000).
[3] Engagement with the work of Sharon James (e.g., Mater Oratio, Filia; Wisconsin 2015) and Dorota Dutsch, Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy: On echoes and voices (Oxford, 2008) would supplement discussion of men’s and women’s spaces. Further, integration of Anthony Gratwick, “Drama” (The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Cambridge, 1982) and Mazzara (2021) would help provide context for the unique world of Roman comedy. For Menander, Mitchell Brown, “Simultaneity in the Plays of Menander,” Etudes 5 (2019), http://www.etudesonline.com/dec2019brown.html, would strengthen discussion on Menander’s use of scenic and extra-scenic space.