Entirely coincidentally, there is a Plautus play titled Mostellaria, translated as The Haunted House, and part of the source of the Erronius subplot. Zero Mostel, of course, was not the authors' first choice or even second choice for Pseudolus. (In fact, they even supposedly threatened to not let it go forward with Mostel.)
Senex is a character name in The Menaechmi, and another character is a courtesan named Erotium. Gymnasium is the name of a courtesan in Plautus' Cistellaria (The Casket).
Mostellaria includes slaves named Grumio and Tranio, names used by Shakespeare in The Taming of the Shrew. I wonder if those names are also in Shakespeare's English source play.
And Pseudolus is indeed the name of the slave who tries to procure a slave girl for his young master in the Plautus play titled Pseudolus.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Lady Wishfort in Congreve's The Way of the World, but of course Restoration comedy, and the later English plays sometimes mistakenly referred to as Restoration comedies, are full of punning character names. |
