SOURCE: "Menander, Plautus, and Terence" in Masters of the Drama, third revised edition, Dover Publications, Inc., 1954, pp. 92-104.

Gassner, a Hungarian-born American scholar, was a great promoter of American theater, particularly the work of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. He edited numerous collections of modern drama and wrote two important dramatic surveys, Masters of Modern Drama (1940) and Theater in Our Times (1954). In the following excerpt from the revised edition of the former work, Gassner discusses Terence's place in the development of Roman theater, pointing out that "he not only knew his limitations but gloried in them .…"

The three-quarters of a century which intervened between Plautus and the next important writer of Roman comedy produced a stratification of taste to which no artist could fail to respond. Drunk with conquest, the Roman populace developed an insatiable taste for rude farces and acrobatics, while the aristocracy was increasingly Hellenized much...