Comedies

As for the readings of the manuscripts, I have used for the most part the resources gathered by others: the transcript of Studemund, the small work of Lindskog on the corrections of the Codex Vetus Old Manuscript (B), and the apparatus of the Teubner edition. However, I have personally inspected many passages about which I was in doubt in all the manuscripts (except A). FERDINAND NOUGARET also taught me many useful things, especially concerning the corrections (B³) of the Codex Vetus, as he spent more days scrutinizing that manuscript than any other person spent hours. Therefore, I have never failed to trust him whenever he disagreed here or there with either Lindskog’s judgment or my own. I also owe thanks to the custodians of these libraries—Leiden, the Ambrosian, and the Vatican—for the most welcome assistance provided to me more than once.

Finally, and this is most important, I would like to warn you, benevolent reader, to recite the verses of Plautus in the way they ought to be recited, lest you lose the sweetness of the 'innumerable rhythms'. You must take care, therefore, to pronounce the letters, especially the vowels, truly and in the Latin fashion, since Plautus not infrequently delights in an almost Celtic assonance, as in Amphitruo 1042 (trochaic septenarius):

Now I shall betake myself straight to the king and explain how the matter was done.

One must also always notice how well the rhythm of Plautine verses squares with that rhythm of daily speech, which is usually brought about by the variety of sounds, while we pronounce some things with a lower and others with a higher voice. Of course, Ritschl’s opinion is both most well-known and most true, that in the verses of our poet "the highest observation of accent¹ is reconciled, as far as possible, with the severity of quantity." Thus, the so-called metrical ictus generally falls upon those words which have emphasis stress/emphasis, as in Menaechmi 1076:

in Asinaria 772:

...at first sight, believe that I am offering a kind of argument for why I preferred the reading that is in the text over other conjectures.

¹ Some, it seems, truly do not know that the Latin accent, just like the Greek (not to mention others), does not always remain the same in the same word but varies according to the roles that the word plays in a sentence. For just as the Greek preposition pros towards does not always have the same accent...