THE RECEPTION OF PLAUTUS IN NORTHERN EUROPE: THE EARLIER SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Although Plautus enjoyed a modest reputation in earlier transalpine Europe, between 1500 and 1530, he rose to major status owing mainly to the work of German humanists building on that of fifteenthcentury Italians. These humanists also fostered the production of Plautine comedies and imitations on stage. Despite the qualms of Erasmus and others, who preferred the milder comedies of Terence, appreciation of his plays soared, especially at the University of Leipzig, where Plautus's great editor Camerarius studied under Veit Werler (1480s-1520s?). Werler's poems on Plautus help explain the reasons for the new enthusiasm, soon to be enhanced, counterintuitively, by the Reformation confessionalization of humanism. Newly understood, then recognized as the quintessential comic dramatist, Plautus rehabilitates comedy as a worthwhile art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]