Jeeves and the servus callidus : scheming servants in Wodehouse and Plautus

Boudreau, Marielle E.

Jeeves and the servus callidus : scheming servants in Wodehouse and Plautus

Date

2015-07-28

Authors

Boudreau, Marielle E.

Type

Thesis

Language

en_US

Abstract

Roman comedy was a form dominated by stock characters: passionate youths, grumpy old men, and braggart soldiers. Among these theatrical masks was that of the servus callidus, or clever slave: an unscrupulous plotter who worked against his old master in order to benefit his young one, and gain money or freedom along the way. The clever slave is in many ways a driving force of comedy: it is his plots that get the play in motion and his verbal cleverness that provides many of the jokes. Although the tricky slave character dates back to Greek New Comedy, particularly Menander, he is one of the principal characters favored by Plautus, one of the two surviving Roman comic playwrights, and it is in Plautus’ works that the full range of this stock character’s abilities and goals become clear. P.G. Wodehouse’s work is similarly founded upon stock characters. Famously accused, at one point, of “putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under different names,” he retorted in an introduction that he would in this book be putting in “all of the old Wodehouse characters under the same names.”1 His stories have as many foolish young men and grumpy old ones as Plautus’ do, but Wodehouse’s most famous comic creation was an individual: the resourceful and intelligent valet Jeeves. While Jeeves is the only servant of his kind to appear in Wodehouse’s stories, his position as helper to the rich young man Bertie Wooster and his intricate, well-planned plots make it clear that he owes a debt to the clever-slave stock character.