Cover -- Halftitle page -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- Preface -- Playbill -- Summary and Highlights -- Character Names and Meanings -- Synopsis and Arcs -- 1 Why Plautus? Why Mostellaria? -- Ghostly Greek Comic Ancestors -- Ghastly Roman Renovations? -- Translation, the Odyssey, and Versatile Plautus -- 2 Foundations and Frames -- Venue and Date -- Roman Slavery -- The Traffic in Women -- Expenses of Monstrous Scale -- Rural Roman Conservatism and Urban Greek Liberality -- Paratheatrical Performances and the Roman Forum -- Ghosts, Haunted Houses, and Superstition -- 3 Staging Mostellaria -- The Roman Scaena -- Masks, Characterization, and Actors -- Costumes and Props -- Embedded Stage Directions -- Monologues, Asides, and Eavesdropping -- Metatheater -- Improvisation -- Meter -- Farce and Low Resolution -- 4 Afterlife and Ghost Lights -- The Postmortem Scripts -- Three Early Modern English Reincarnations -- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum -- Tranio Trickster -- Appendix 1: Pliny's "Haunted House" (Letter 7.27.5-11) -- Appendix 2: A Doubling Chart -- Appendix 3: Character Line Counts -- Appendix 4: A Selective Chronology -- Notes -- Editions and English Translations -- Works Cited -- Index.
