The Brothers Menaechmus

Intent on revenge, Peniculus enters with Menaechmus’s wife and stokes her fury at her wayward husband. Menaechmus enters, unaware of their presence, and sings a song about the Roman system of patronage, which has delayed him in the forum. Caught in the act, Menaechmus is given a thorough reprimand from both his wife and his parasite. In the end, he promises to retrieve the dress from Erotium, although he secretly believes he can just retreat to his lover’s house. However, when Menaechmus asks Erotium to return the dress, she is outraged and accuses him of trying to cheat her by taking the dress back and then denying it. She slams the door in his face and Menaechmus slopes off stage, “universally kicked out” (698).

Menaechmus II enters the stage, only to be intercepted by Menaechmus’s wife, who mistakes him for her husband. When she asks him for the dress, he calls her a “wild and wicked woman” (731). Outraged, she orders a slave to find her father, an elderly man who enters slowly, singing a song about the trials of old age. He predicts that his daughter has been nagging her husband too much: “Don’t check what he’s doing,” he advises, “where he’s going, what his business is” (788).