Chapter 1 - Through the Comic Looking Glass

Summary

Chapter 1 examines two interrelated concepts – “metatheater” and “theatricality” – that undergird Catullus’ and other Romans’ understanding of their society and the roles that they play in it. Romans of the first century BCE imagined themselves living in a world that could often seem interchangeable with that of their literary and popular dramas, especially Roman comedy, whose boundary between fiction and reality is thin at the best of times. This chapter explores the attitudes that make possible not merely theater that is self-conscious of its status as theater, but the underlying ideas that allow self-conscious theater to be legible. In particular, this chapter considers metaphors of life as theater and points of contact between notions of self and of performance – persona in the sense of “unique individual” and in the sense of “mask that superimposes its identity on the wearer,” both of which definitions were operant in the late Republic. Romans often represented themselves playing a series of shifting roles and improvising their lives as they lived them.