Page "Plautus" Paragraph 56

Like Packman, George Duckworth uses the scene headings in the manuscripts to support his theory about unnamed Plautine characters.

There are approximately 220 characters in the 20 plays of Plautus.

Thirty are unnamed in both the scene headings and the text and there are about nine characters who are named in the ancient text but not in any modern one.

This means that about 18 % of the total number of characters in Plautus are nameless.

Most of the very important characters have names while most of the unnamed characters are of less importance.

However, there are some abnormalities — the main character in Casina is not mentioned by name anywhere in the text.

In other instances, Plautus will give a name to a character that only has a few words or lines.

One explanation is that some of the names have been lost over the years ; and for the most part, major characters do have names.