Tymoteusz Mikołajczak, a member of the Early Printed Books Department, has identified a copy of Asinaria by Joannes Burmeister, a comedy published in Lüneburg in 1625, in the collections of the National Library of Poland (call number: SD XVII.2.6229). The work had previously been described in scholarly literature as lost. Until now, the only evidence of its existence was an auction catalogue of Johann Albert Fabricius’s library dating from 1738. Burmeister’s rediscovered Asinaria is a paraphrase of Plautus’s comedy of the same title (literally, “The Comedy of Asses”), which, according to Plautus himself, was an adaptation of an unidentified Greek comedy.
The author of the paraphrase, Johann (Joannes) Burmeister (1576–1638), was one of the most original Neo-Latin poets and playwrights of his time. Having been crowned poet laureate by the Count Palatine of the Rhine in 1600, he studied theology in Rostock and was ordained a deacon in Lauenburg in 1601. For a quarter of a century, he earned a modest living as a pastor in Gützow, in the Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg (1603–1628). His relatively stable life was disrupted by the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War and the invasion by Catholic League forces in 1627, which forced him to seek refuge in Hamburg. Having been elected superintendent of the Duchy of Lauenburg in 1628, Burmeister spent the final years of his life as rector of a church in Uelzen (1635–1638).
Read more here: https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/6266-a-lost-comedy-from-1625-discovered-at-the-national-library-of-poland.html