This work is a comprehensive contribution on the dramatic comedy of the Roman comic playwright T. Maccius Plautus. From the starting point of a critical review of previous scholarship on Plautus and the most important works on dramatic comedy as a phenomenon in itself, the author develops her own model of the interplay between drama, comedy and tension. This principle, which can be applied to any other form of drama, is illustrated on the basis of cross-sections through passages of Plautus’ comedies and other European dramas, before finally being applied to Plautus’ Menaechmi as a whole. The central theme of the entire work is the particular use the Roman author made of structures of communication between the audience and the characters on stage.