The humour resides less in the irony of the situation than in jokes and puns. Consistency of characterization and plot development are sacrificed for the sake of an immediate effect. The roles of stock characters such as the parasite seem to have been much expanded. Plautus adapted his models with considerable freedom and wrote plays that are in several respects different from anything we know of New Comedy. The plays are nearly all either known or assumed to be adaptations of (Greek) New Comedy, with plots portraying love affairs, confusion of identity and misunderstandings. Varro drew up a list of 21 plays which were generally agreed to be by Plautus, and doubtless they are the 21 transmitted in our manuscripts.
Comic playwright, author of fabulae palliatae (see fabula) between c.205 and 184 bc plays by Plautus are the earliest Latin works to have survived complete.
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