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Stock Characters
Roman plays were mostly comedies, there isn't much information known on tragedies. The plays would take place outside (in a city street, a seashore, or a country road.) There would always be three doors, one to the brothel, one to the temple, and one to the hero's house. There were also stock characters: clever slave (thinks he's smarter thanhis master), young but foolish man (thinks about nothing but getting a girl), senex ('dirty old man', wife of young man), domina (wife of senex, overbearing, rules house with iron fist, mother of young man), slave dealer/brothel owner (only cares about making money), coquus (cook), soldier (miles glorisus, soldierly solder, only cares about fighting and winning), drunken old woman, sweet young girl (sterotypical blonde, usually object of young man's desires, usually a prostitute who has been sold into slavery illegally), banker (only interest in money, usually a 'bad guy'), and the parasite (will do anything for next meal, usually gets into all sorts of trouble as a result).
There were two major playwrights from that period, T. Maccius Plautus and Terence (those are their stage names, their real names are no longer known). The languange spoken in the plays is what the average Roman would've spoken, the 'archaic' form of Latin.
Troupes were managed my actor-managers. Since favor from a public was a good thing to have, the managers would often bribe certain audience members to cheer at certain times during the play; officials would remember that people like certain plays and then use that troupe when he had a panem et circinses.
Little is known about costumes except that all the
actors wore masks which depicted the character they were
playing.
