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

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