Rudens is a play by Roman author Plautus. Its name translates from Latin as "The Rope;" in English translation it has been called The Shipwreck or The Fisherman's Rope. It is a Roman comedy, which describes how a girl, Palaestra, stolen from her parents by pirates, is reunited with her father, Daemones, ironically, by means of her pimp, Labrax. The play is set on the coast of Cyrene, in north Africa, although the characters come from a range of cities around the Mediterranean, most notably, Athens.

Titus Maccius Plautus was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by Livius Andronicus, the innovator of Latin literature. The word Plautine refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his.