Menaechmi

Menaechmi ("The Twins") is a Latin comedy by Titus Maccius Plautus (254-184 B.C.).

The original text

It belongs to the type of comedy called by the Romans "fabula palliata" because the characters in it wore Greek costume, rather than the distinctive Roman toga. This comedy is about the misadventures caused by the presence in one city of long-separated twins.

Translations and adaptations

The play has been translated and adapted in various ways, and has been the source of many other works.

The original Latin play was translated by various people over the years, including Hansell Hewitt.

The play was the major source for William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, and to a lesser extent perhaps of Twelfth Night.

Adapted into Italian by Carlo Goldoni in 1747 as I Due Gemelli Veneziani ("The two Venetian twins", also formally translated and published as The Venetian Twins in English)

The Goldoni version was adapted as a comic drama in three acts called I Tre Gemelli Veneziani ("The three Venetian twins") is by Antonio Collalto Mattiuzzi. Originally written in Italian when Mattiuzzi was at the Theatre Italien in Paris (1759-1778).

The Mattiuzzi version was in turn translated into French as Les Trois Jumeaux Vénitiens ("The three Venetian twins") by P.-A. Lefèvre de Marcouville, into Spanish as Los Tres Mellizos ("The three twins") and into Dutch as De Venetiaanse Drielingen ("The Venetian triplets"), both the latter by anonymous translators. It was also adapted and translated into English as Three and the Deuce! by Prince Hoare and Stephen Storace.

A radical South African localized adaptation called Waaihoek se Vinkel en Koljander was written in Afrikaans by Nico Luwes (2000/2001)