Anticipating Afterlife: Metapoetic Reading of the "Revival" Prologue of Plautus' Casina.

A part of the prologue of the Casina which apparently records the play's reperformance sometime after Plautus' lifetime has been universally classified as a post-Plautine interpolation. Closer inspection however reveals not only a system of imagery throughout the prologue but also its numerous thematically relevant correspondences with the imagery and the plot of the play. The correspondences are read as metapoetic allusions to the play's revival and attributed to a single author with the hypothesis that it might be Plautus himself. The "revival" prologue is interpreted as Plautus' humorous anticipation of the reception of one of his last plays and the afterlife of his comic legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]