The Rocky Horror Picture Show as the Inverted Plautine Comedy

The first line of Plautus’ epitaph reads: “Postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, comoedia luget, scaena est deserta,” or roughly translated, “since Plautus is dead, comedy mourns, deserted is the stage” (Garrod, 531).  While his body no longer remains, lively traces of his plays' essential elements, such as his use of “stock characters” and “mischievous agents” to create situations that “rival social norms,” can be found in almost any situational comedy today.

Even though this plot-line is common to Plautus work, he did not find fame as its originator, but as the inventive stage-adaptor who was able to “transform [it, or] New Greek Comedy” into “accessible forms of entertainment, for, and to please his audience” (Beacham, 32). In today’s time, the best example of a modern adaptation of Plautine comedy is the outlandish live performance of  The Rocky Horror Picture Show, since it not only parodies the same comical structure, but through its ad-libbing and shadowing of actors on-screen, also maintains the same Plautine fundamentals of “literary ignorance,” for the sake of audience’s entertainment” (34). The Rocky Horror Picture Show parodies the classic Plautine comedic structure, by inverting it, and hence adapting the adaptor’s structure into a self-conscious tale of fatalist love, revolting slaves, and alienation to a modern crowd no less “saturnalian” than that of Old Latin Rome.

Through the “argumentum” and “witty worded” introduction within The Rocky Horror Picture Show, one can observe the reversed structure of the Plautine prologue (Ozakturk, 2). Plautus’ prologues were performed not just to “hold the attention of the audience,” but also for the sake of the “argumentum-the outline of the plot of the play to avoid confusion for the audience” (3). Plautus’ prologues, such as the one in Casina, often start with an inviting approach:

"We’ve duly taken note of what the people say:
You’re longing to applaud a play by Plautus here today.
A titillating tale, to charm, amuse and move;
The sort of stuff the older crowd approve." (Beacham, qtd. 89)

Using Casina as an example, Plautus’ prologues often follow this form, shifting between the initial focus of entertainment to the argumentum, or describing the plot and the background of the play in brief:

"The old man’s wife has stumbled on the plot!
To thwart her husband, she would throw her lot
In with the son, but then the secrets out!
Dad learns of son’s infatuation, and- the lout-
Sends him abroad to party to the plan"(qtd. 90)

Within The Rocky Horror Picture Show however, the structure is reversed as the description of the plot is presented first, and then the invitation to join in to the performance is laid out for the audience:

"Dr X will build a creature
See androids fighting Brad and Janet
Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet
Oh-at the late night, double-feature, picture show.
Oh when the worlds collide, I’m going to give you some terrible trills
Like a-science fiction-double feature Picture show
In the back row! I want to go." (Sharman, 13-14)

Although both structures acknowledge the audience, and their participation in the performance, Plautus’ elongates the attention given to the self-conscious actor and the audience. However, since both prologues do use the introduction within the same means of examining the play “from the outside looking in,” with a promise of “immediate action to take place,” they both can be said to grant the same purpose in their performances-anticipation and self-conscious observation (Beacham, 91).

Although Plautus’ plays often prove that “characters who rise to the delivery of moralistic sententiae, do not maintain their dignified attitude for long,” their immorality or rebellion never jeopardizes society’s class structures or the characters’ relationships (36). While there are instances of “breaking social norms,” by having slaves lie to masters, or lovers plot to run away despite society’s disapproval, the rebellion present never rises above society’s rules. Despite the efforts that takes the lovers, or the slaves to get what it is that they really desire, in the end they are still confined to the prescript of their own class structures. The young lovers for example, even if faced with seemingly impossible circumstances, are united at the end not just by the help of the clever slave, but also by some discovery that the bond is accepted by society’s rules, (often the foreigner involved is really a native and thereby legitimizes the relationship as acceptable). For the clever slave, even if he outwits his master, he is still indebted to self-imposed servitude. As the case in Pseudolos shows, even when Pseudolos has won the bet against his master Simo, and could buy his freedom, he instead decides to invite Simo out for drinks with his money in order to assuage his master’s disgrace in losing. As long as young lovers are Roman citizens, they end up together. As long as clever slaves do not get too clever with their masters, they are permitted to create whatever plots they desire. Even though one may state that there is an “enjoyment of guilty psychological pleasures in breaking social norms” in Plautus’ plays, the plays never dare to break out of the expected stake of stock-relationships for the Roman audience.

Through the mocking interpretation of Plautus’ young lovers within The Rocky Horror Picture Show, their roles are reversed for the sake of the modern audience’s amusement in the breaking up of their constraining stereotypical relationship. As opposed to the typical structure of Plautus’ young lovers starting out the play under the premise of finding a way to be together, within The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the lovers-Brad and Janet are already happily together. Therefore the “crude deception” that is forced upon the two is not for the sake of keeping them together, as it is used to keep the lovers apart from their antiquated, virginal lifestyles. Although in Plautus’ plays, such as Pseudolos, the slave’s main role is to help the young lovers find emotional bliss through means of deception and disguises, these means are utilized within The Rocky Horror Picture Show by the character Frank to create emotional turmoil between the lovers. Frank, the (arguably) slave/master of the mansion introduces Brad and Janet “to his favorite obsession…the one that relives tension,” (or sex), through disguising himself and seducing the two virgins (Sharman, 42). After Brad and Janet are both seduced gleefully by Frank, the two no longer seek to act as “clean-cut well to do Americans,” as the script introduced them as, but to be dressed up as “sweet transvestites of Transylvania” just like the lustful Frank (140).

While it is true that Brad and Janet do not maintain their virginal morality for long within the play which can be deemed Plautine, the fact that their relationship is the obstacle in the way of their emotional bliss reverses the common expectation of a Plautine comedy. In order to appease the crowd, the convention of the lover’s happiness becomes passé when compared to the act of dramatizing the characters’ moral flaws in a festive attire of cross-dressing, musical arrangements, and sexual euphemisms. Through this desire to please the audience, Sharman proves once again how the intention of his script holds true to modern expectancies, but due to this favor, is still Plautine in theory.

While there is still the Plautine idea of a slave and master relationship in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the clarity of this line is questioned. Although Plautus may allow his slaves to be clever, and even dupe their masters, the slave is always set in his place of servitude in his plays. However, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, it cannot be clear whether it is the slave, or slaves, that overcome the master, or if the master who thought he had control was really just a slave all along. While the characters Riff Raff and Magenta are introduced and seen by Brad and Janet as the “servants” when they first arrive to the mansion, the two lovers do not see their “outbursts” of songs (with lines such as: “Fantasy free me!”) as behavior suitable for typical “domestics” (Sharman, 41).