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Varro finally decided in favour of only 21, to which he added 19 more as probably genuine, the rest he pronounced uncertain. We may join him in regarding it as very probable that the plays falsely attributed to Plautus were productions of his own and the next generation, which for business reasons the managers allowed to pass under the title of "Plautine."
The Plautine dialogue beyond doubt departed very frequently from its models; Terence boasts of the verbal adherence of his imitations to the originals, by which however we are not to understand a verbal translation in our sense.
In 1563 a play entitled Aretusa was presented before Alfonso II and his brother the cardinal, by the students of law at Ferrara, at the command, it is said, of Laura Eustoccia d' Este. The verse is blank, diversified by a single sonnet, but the piece is again a hybrid of an earlier type a love-knot solved by the discovery of consanguinity with certain elements of Plautine comedy added.
But all this display of silk and camlet was nothing to the ballets and pantomimes which served as interludes between the acts of the Plautine dramas.
That the public still in the Sullan age expected to see such, appears from the reproductions belonging to this epoch of Plautine comedies with the titles and names of the persons altered, with reference to which the managers well added that it was better to see a good old piece than a bad new one.
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