History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Volume I Part 12

Labrax then approaches to the vicinity of the temple of Venus, and having discovered that the damsels who had saved themselves from the wreck were secreted there, he rushes in to claim and seize them. Thus far the play is lively and well conducted, but the subsequent scenes are too long protracted. They are full of trifling, and are more loaded than those of any other comedy of Plautus, with quaint conceits, the quibbling witticisms, and the scurrilities of slaves. The scene in which Labrax attempts to seize the damsels at the altar, and Daemones protects them, is insufferably tedious, but terminates at length with the pander being dragged to prison. After this, the fisherman of Daemones is introduced, congratulating himself on having found a wallet which had been lost from the pander's s.h.i.+p, and contained his money, as well as some effects belonging to the damsels. The ridiculous schemes which he proposes, and the future grandeur he antic.i.p.ates in consequence of his good fortune, is an excellent satire on the fantastic projects of those who are elevated with a sudden success. Having been observed, however, by the servant of Pleusidippus, who suspected that this wallet contained articles by which Palaestra might discover her parents, a long contest for its possession ensues between them, which might be amusing in the representation, but is excessively tiresome in perusal. This may be also remarked of the scene where their dispute is referred to the arbitration of Daemones, who apparently is chosen umpire for no other reason than because this was necessary to unravel the plot. Daemones discovers, from the contents of the wallet, that Palaestra is his daughter. The princ.i.p.al interest being thus exhausted, the remaining scenes become more and more tedious. We feel no great sympathy with the disappointment of the fisherman, and take little amus.e.m.e.nt in the bargain which he drives with the pander for the restoration of the gold, or his stipulation with his master for a reward, on account of the important service he had been instrumental in rendering him.

This play has been imitated by Ludovico Dolce, in his comedy _Il Ruffiano_, which was published in 1560, and which, the author says in his prologue, was "_vest.i.ta di habito antico, e ridrizzato alla forma moderna_." The _Ruffiano_ is not a mere translation from the Latin: the language and names are altered, and the scenes frequently transposed.

There is likewise introduced the additional character of the old man Lucretio, father to the lover; also his lying valet Tagliacozzo, and his jealous wife Simona. Lucretio comes from Venice to the town where the scene of the play is laid, to recover a son who had left home in quest of a girl in the possession of Secco the Ruffiano. The first act is occupied with the details of Lucretio's family misfortunes, and it is only in the commencement of the second act that the s.h.i.+pwreck and escape of the damsels are introduced, so that the play opens in a way by no means so interesting and picturesque as the _Rudens_ of Plautus. The women having taken refuge in a church, Lucretio offers them shelter in his own house, which exposes them to the rage of his jealous wife Simona. By the a.s.sistance, however, of one of these girls, he discovers his lost son, who was her lover; and the recognition of the damsel herself as daughter of Isidoro, who corresponds to the Daemones of Plautus, is then brought about in the same manner as in the Latin original, and gives rise to the same tedious and selfish disputes among the inferior characters. Madame Riccoboni has also employed the _Rudens_ in her comedy _Le Naufrage_.

_Stichus_-is so called from a slave, who is a princ.i.p.al character in the comedy. The subject is the continued determination of two ladies to persist in their constancy to their husbands, who, from their long absence, without having been heard of, were generally supposed to be dead.

In this resolution they remain firm, in spite of the urgency of their fathers to make them enter into second marriages, till at length their conjugal fidelity is rewarded by the safe arrival of their consorts. It would appear that Plautus had not found this subject sufficient to form a complete play; he has accordingly filled up the comic part of the drama with the carousal of Stichus and his fellow slaves, and the stratagems of the parasite Gelasimus, in order to be invited to the entertainments which the husbands prepared in honour of their return.

_Trinummus_-is taken from the _Thesaurus_ of Philemon; but Plautus has changed the original t.i.tle into Trinummus-a jocular name given to himself by one of the characters hired to carry on a deception, for which he had received three pieces of money, as his reward. The prologue is spoken by two allegorical personages, Luxury, and her daughter Want, the latter of whom had been commissioned by her mother to take up her residence in the house of the prodigal youth Lesbonicus. The play is then opened by a Protatick person, as he is called, who comes to chide his friend Callicles for behaviour which appeared to him in some points incomprehensible; in consequence of which the person accused explains his conduct at once to the spectators and his angry monitor. It seems Charmides, an Athenian, being obliged to leave his own country on business of importance, intrusted the guardians.h.i.+p of his son and daughter to his friend Callicles. He had also confided to him the management of his affairs, particularly the care of a treasure which was secreted in a concealed part of his dwelling. Lesbonicus, the son of Charmides, being a dissolute youth, had put up the family mansion to sale, and his guardian, in order that the treasure entrusted to him might not pa.s.s into other hands, had purchased the house at a low price. Meanwhile a young man, called Lysiteles, had fallen in love with the daughter of Charmides, and obtained the consent of her brother to his marriage. Her guardian was desirous to give her a portion from the treasure, but does not wish to reveal the secret to her extravagant brother. The person calling himself Trinummus is therefore hired to pretend that he had come as a messenger from the father-to present a forged letter to the son and to feign that he had brought home money for the daughter's portion. While Trinummus is making towards the house, to commence performance of his part, Charmides arrives unexpectedly from abroad, and seeing this Counterfeit approaching his house, immediately accosts him. A highly comic scene ensues, in which the hireling talks of his intimacy with Charmides, and also of being entrusted with his letters and money; and when Charmides at length discovers himself, he treats him as an impostor. The entrance of Charmides into his house is the simple solution of this plot, of which the _nodus_ is neither very difficult nor ingenious. This meagre subject is filled up with an amicable contest between Lesbonicus and his sister's lover, concerning her portion,-the latter generously offering to take her without dowry, and the former refusing to give her away on such ignominious terms.

The English translators of Plautus have remarked, that the art of the dramatist in the conduct of this comedy is much to be admired:-"The opening of it," they observe, "is highly interesting; the incidents naturally arise from each other, and the whole concludes happily with the reformation of Lesbonicus, and the marriage of Lysiteles. It abounds with excellent moral reflections, and the same may be said of it with equal justice as of the _Captives_:-

'Ad pudicos mores facta est haec fabula.' "

On the other hand, none of Plautus' plays is more loaded with improbabilities of that description into which he most readily falls. Thus Stasimus, the slave of Lesbonicus, in order to save a farm which his master proposed giving as a portion to his sister, persuades the lover's father that a descent to Acheron opened from its surface,-that the cattle which fed on it fell sick,-and that the owners themselves, after a short period, invariably died or hanged themselves. In order to introduce the scene between Charmides and the Counterfeit, the former, though just returned from a sea voyage and a long absence, waits in the street, on the appearance of a stranger, merely from curiosity to know his business; and in the following scene the slave Stasimus, after expressing the utmost terror for the lash on account of his tarrying so long, still loiters to propound a series of moral maxims, inconsistent with his character and situation.

The plot of the _Dowry_ of Giovam-maria Cecchi is precisely the same with that of the _Trinummus_; but that dramatist possessed a wonderful art of giving an air of originality to his closest imitations, by the happy adaptation of ancient subjects to Italian manners. The _Tresor Cache_ of Destouches is almost translated from the _Trinummus_, only he has brought forward on the stage Hortense, the Prodigal's sister, and has added the character of Julie, the daughter of the absent father's friend, of whom the Prodigal himself is enamoured. In this comedy the character of the two youths are meant to be contrasted, and are more strongly brought out in the imitation, from both of them being in love. A German play, ent.i.tled _Schatz_, by the celebrated dramatist Lessing, is also borrowed from this Latin original. The scene, too, in _Trinummus_, between Charmides and the counterfeit messenger, has given rise to one in the _Suppositi_ of Ariosto, and through that medium to another in Shakspeare's _Taming of the Shrew_, where, when it is found necessary for the success of Lucentio's stratagem at Padua, that some one should personate his father, the _pedant_ is employed for this purpose. Meanwhile, the father himself unexpectedly arrives at Padua, and a comical scene in consequence pa.s.ses between them.

_Truculentus_-is so called from a morose and clownish servant, who, having accompanied his master from the country to Rome, inveighs against the depraved morals of that city, and especially against Phronesium, the courtezan by whom his master had been enticed. His churlish disposition, however, is only exhibited in a single scene. On the sole other occasion on which he is introduced, he is represented as having become quite mild and affable. For this change no reason is a.s.signed, but it is doubtless meant to be understood that he had meanwhile been soothed and wheedled by the arts of some courtezan. The characters, however, of the Truculentus and his rustic master, have little to do with the main plot of the drama, which is chiefly occupied with the fate of the lovers, whom Phronesium enticed to their ruin. When she had consumed the wealth of the infatuated Dinarchus, she lays her snares for Stratophanes, the Babylonian captain, to whom she pretends to have borne a son, in order that she may prey on him with more facility. This drama is accordingly occupied with her feigned pregnancy, her counterfeited solicitude, and her search for a supposit.i.tious child, to which she persuades her dupe that she had given birth, but which afterwards proves to be the child of her former lover Dinarchus, by a young lady to whom he had been betrothed.

In the first act of this play an account is given of the mysteries of a courtezan's occupation, which, with a pa.s.sage near the commencement of the _Mostellaria_, and a few fragments of Alexis, a writer of the middle comedy, gives us some insight into the practices by which they entrapped and seduced, their lovers, by whom they appear to have been maintained in prodigious state and splendour. In a play of Terence, one of the characters, talking of the train of a courtezan, says,

"Ducitur familia tota, Vestispicae, unctor, auri custos, flabelliferae, sandaligerulae, Cantrices, cistellatrices, nuncii, renuncii(265)."

The Greek courtezan possessed attainments, which the more virtuous of her s.e.x were neither expected nor permitted to acquire. On her the education which was denied to a spotless woman, was carefully bestowed. To sing, to dance, to play on the lyre and the lute, were accomplishments in which the courtezan was, from her earliest years, completely instructed. The habits of private life afforded ample opportunity for the display of such acquirements, as the charm of convivial meetings among the Greeks was thought imperfect, unless the enjoyments were brightened by a display of the talents which belonged exclusively to the Wanton. But though these refinements alone were sufficient to excite the highest admiration of the Greek youth, unaccustomed as they were to female society, and often procured a splendid establishment for the accomplished courtezan, some of that cla.s.s embraced a much wider range of education; and having added to their attainments in the fine arts, a knowledge of philosophy and the powers of eloquence, they became, thus trained and educated, the companions of orators, statesmen, and poets. The arrival of Aspasia at Athens is said to have produced a change in the manners of that city, and to have formed a new and remarkable epoch in the history of society. The cla.s.s to which she belonged was of more political importance in Athens than in any other state of Greece; and though I scarcely believe that the Peloponnesian war had its origin in the wrongs of Aspasia, the Athenian courtezans, with their various interests, were often alluded to in grave political harangues, and they were considered as part of the establishment of the state. Above all, the comic poets were devoted to their charms, were conversant with their manners, and often experienced their rapacity and infidelity; for, being unable to support them in their habits of expense, an opulent old man, or dissolute youth, was in consequence frequently preferred. The pa.s.sion of Menander for Glycerium is well known, and Diphilus, from whom Plautus borrowed his _Rudens_, consorted with Gnathena, celebrated as one of the most lively and luxurious of Athenian Charmers(266). Accordingly, many of the plays of the new comedy derive their names from celebrated courtezans; but it does not appear, from the fragments which remain, that they were generally represented in a favourable light, or in their meridian splendour of beauty and accomplishments(267). In the Latin plays, the courtezans are not drawn so highly gifted in point of talents, or even beauty, as might be expected; but it was necessary to paint them as elegant, fascinating, and expensive, in order to account for the infatuation and ruin of their lovers. The Greeks and Romans were alike strangers to the polite gallantry of Modern Europe, and to the enthusiastic love which chivalry is said to have inspired in the middle ages. Thus their hearts and senses were left unprotected, to become the prey of such women as the Phronesium of the _Truculentus_, who is a picture of the most rapacious and debauched of her cla.s.s, and whose vices are neither repented of, nor receive punishment, at the conclusion of the drama. Dinarchus may be regarded as a representation of the most profligate of the Greek or Roman youth, yet he is not held up to any particular censure; and, in the end, he is neither reformed nor adequately punished. The portion, indeed, of the lady whom he had violated, and at last agrees to espouse, is threatened by her father to be diminished, but this seems merely said in a momentary fit of resentment.

This play, with all its imperfections, is said to have been a great favourite of the author(268); and was a very popular comedy at Rome. It has descended to us rather in a mutilated state, which may, perhaps, have deprived us of some fine sentences or witticisms, which the ancients had admired; for, as a French translator of Plautus has remarked, their approbation could scarcely have been founded on the interest of the subject, the disposition of the incidents, or the moral which is inculcated.

The character of Lolp.o.o.p, the servant of Belfond Senior, in Shadwell's _Squire of Alsatia_, has been evidently formed on that of the Truculentus, in this comedy. His part, however, as in the original, is chiefly episodical; and the princ.i.p.al plot, as shall be afterwards shown, has been founded on the _Adelphi_ of Terence.

The above-mentioned plays are the twenty dramas of Plautus, which are still extant. But, besides these, a number of comedies, now lost, have been attributed to him. Aulus Gellius(269) mentions, that there were about a hundred and thirty plays, which, in his age, pa.s.sed under the name of Plautus; and of these, nearly forty t.i.tles, with a few scattered fragments, still remain. From the time of Varro to that of Aulus Gellius, it seems to have been a subject of considerable discussion what plays were genuine; and it appears, that the best informed critics had come to the conclusion, that a great proportion of those comedies, which vulgarly pa.s.sed for the productions of Plautus, were spurious. Such a vast number were probably ascribed to him, from his being the head and founder of a great dramatic school; so that those pieces, which he had perhaps merely retouched, came to be wholly attributed to his pen. As in the schools of painting, so in the dramatic art, a celebrated master may have disciples who adopt his principles. He may give the plan which they fill up, or complete what they have imperfectly executed. Many paintings pa.s.sed under the name of Raphael, of which Julio Romano, and others, were the chief artists. "There is no doubt," says Aulus Gellius, "but that those plays, which seem not to have been written by Plautus, but are ascribed to him, were by certain ancient poets, and afterwards retouched and polished by him(270)." Even those comedies which were written in the same taste with his, came to be termed _Fabulae Plautinae_, in the same way as we still speak of aesopian fable, and Homeric verse. "Plautus quidem," says Macrobius, "ea re clarus fuit, ut post mortem ejus, comdiae, quae incertae ferebantur, Plautinae tamen esse, de jocorum copia, agnoscerentur(271)." It is thus evident, that a sufficient number of jests stamped a dramatic piece as the production of Plautus in the opinion of the mult.i.tude. But Gellius farther mentions, that there was a certain writer of comedies, whose name was Plautius, and whose plays having the inscription "Plauti,"

were considered as by Plautus, and were named Plautinae from Plautus, though in fact they ought to have been called Plautianae from Plautius. All this sufficiently accounts for the vast number of plays ascribed to Plautus, and which the most learned and intelligent critics have greatly restricted. They have differed, however, very widely, as to the number which they have admitted to be genuine. Some, says Servius, maintain, that Plautus wrote twenty-one comedies, others forty, others a hundred(272).

Gellius informs us, that Lucius aelius, a most learned man, was of opinion that not more than twenty-five were of his composition(273). Varro wrote a work, ent.i.tled _Quaestiones Plautinae_, a considerable portion of which was devoted to a discussion concerning the authenticity of the plays commonly a.s.signed to Plautus, and the result of his investigation was, that twenty-one were unquestionably to be admitted as genuine. These were subsequently termed Varronian, in consequence of having been separated by Varro from the remainder, as no way doubtful, and universally allowed to be by Plautus. The twenty-one Varronian plays are the twenty still extant, and the _Vidularia_. This comedy appears to have been originally subjoined to the Palatine MS. of the still existing plays of Plautus, but to have been torn off, since, at the conclusion of the _Truculentus_, we find the words "Vidularia incipit(274):" And Mai has recently published some fragments of it, which he found in an Ambrosian MS. Such, it would appear, had been the high authority of Varro, that only those plays, which had received his indubitable sanction, were transcribed in the MSS. as the genuine works of Plautus; yet it would seem that Varro himself had, on some occasion, a.s.sented to the authenticity of several others, induced by their style of humour corresponding to that of Plautus. He had somewhere mentioned, that the _Saturio_ (the Glutton,) and the _Addictus_, (the Adjudged,) were written by Plautus during the period in which he laboured as a slave at the hand-mill. He was also of opinion, that the _Botia_ was by Plautus; and Aulus Gellius concurs with him in this(275), citing certain verses delivered by a hungry parasite, which, he says, are perfectly Plautinian, and must satisfy every person to whom Plautus is familiar, of the authenticity of that drama. From this very pa.s.sage, Osannus derives an argument unfavourable to the authenticity of the play.

The parasite exclaims against the person who first distinguished hours, and set up the sun-dials, of which the town was so full. Now, Osannus maintains, that there were no sun-dials at Rome in the time of Plautus, and that the day was not then distributed into hours, but into much larger portions of time(276). The _Nervolaria_ was one of the disputed plays in the time of Au. Gellius; and also the _Fretum_, which Gellius thinks the most genuine of all(277). Varro, in the first Book of his _Quaestiones Plautinae_ gives the following words of Attius, which, I presume, are quoted from his work on poetry and poets, ent.i.tled _Didascalica_. "For neither were the _Gemini_, the _Leones_, the _Condalium_, the _a.n.u.s Plauti_, the _Bis Compressa_, the _Botia_, or the _Commorientes_, by Plautus, but by M. Aquilius." It appears, however, from the prologue to the _Adelphi_ of Terence, that the _Commorientes_ was written by Plautus, having been taken by him from a Greek comedy of Diphilus(278). In opposition to the above pa.s.sage of Attius, and to his own opinion expressed in the _Quaestiones Plautinae_, Varro, in his treatise on the Latin Language, frequently cites, as the works of Plautus, the plays enumerated by Attius, and various others; but this was probably in deference to common opinion, or in agreement with ordinary language, and was not intended to contradict what he had elsewhere delivered, or to stamp with the character of authenticity productions, which he had more deliberately p.r.o.nounced to be spurious(279).

From the review which has now been given of the comedies of Plautus, something may have been gathered of their general scope and tenor. In each plot there is sufficient action, movement, and spirit. The incidents never flag, but rapidly accelerate the catastrophe. Yet, if we regard his plays in the ma.s.s, there is a considerable, and perhaps too great, uniformity in their fables. They hinge, for the most part, on the love of some dissolute youth for a courtezan, his employment of a slave to defraud a father of a sum sufficient to supply his expensive pleasures, and the final discovery that his mistress is a free-born citizen. The charge against Plautus of uniformity in his characters, as well as in his fables, has been echoed without much consideration. The portraits of Plautus, it must be remembered, were drawn or copied at a time when the division of labour and progress of refinement had not yet given existence to those various descriptions of professions and artists-the doctor, author, attorney-in short, all those characters, whose habits, singularities, and whims, have supplied the modern Thalia with such diversified materials, and whose contrasts give to each other such relief, that no caricature is required in any individual representation. The characters of Alcmena, Euclio, and Periplectomenes, are sufficiently novel, and are not repeated in any of the other dramas; but there is ample range and variety even in those which he has most frequently employed-the avaricious old man-the debauched young fellow-the knavish slave-the braggart captain-the rapacious courtezan-the obsequious parasite-and the shameless pander. On most of these parts some observations have been made, while mentioning the different comedies in which they are introduced. The severe father and thoughtless youth, are those in which he has best succeeded, or at least they are those with which we are best pleased. The captain always appears to us exaggerated, and the change which has taken place in society and manners prevents us, perhaps, from entering fully into the characters of the slave, the parasite, and pander; but in the fathers and sons, he has shown his knowledge of our common nature, and delineated them with the truest and liveliest touches. In the former, the struggles of avarice and severity, with paternal affection, are finely wrought up and blended. Even when otherwise respectable characters, they are always represented as disliking their wives, which was not inconsistent with the manners of a Grecian state, in which marriage was merely regarded as a duty; and was a feature naturally enough exhibited on the theatre of a nation, one of whose most ill.u.s.trious characters declared in the Senate, as a received maxim, that Romans married, not for the sake of domestic happiness, but to rear up soldiers for the republic.

The Latin style of Plautus excels in briskness of dialogue, as well as purity of expression, and has been highly extolled by the learned Roman grammarians, particularly by Varro, who declares, that if the Muses were to speak Latin they would employ his diction(280); but as M. Schlegel has remarked, it is necessary to distinguish between the opinion of philologers, and that of critics and poets. Plautus wrote at a period when his country as yet possessed no written or literary language. Every phrase was drawn from the living source of conversation. This early simplicity seemed pleasing and artless to those Romans, who lived in an age of excessive refinement and cultivation; but this apparent merit was rather accidental than the effect of poetic art. Making, however, some allowance for this, there can be no doubt that Plautus wonderfully improved and refined the Latin language from the rude form in which it had been moulded by Ennius. That he should have effected such an alteration is not a little remarkable. Plautus was nearly contemporary with the Father of Roman song-according to most accounts he was born a slave-he was condemned, during part of his life, to the drudgery of the lowest manual labour-and, so far as we learn, he was not distinguished by the patronage of the Great, or admitted into Patrician society. Ennius, on the other hand, if he did not pa.s.s his life in affluence, spent it in the exercise of an honourable profession, and was the chosen familiar friend of Cato, Scipio Africa.n.u.s, Fulvius n.o.bilior, and Laelius, the most learned as well as polished citizens of the Roman republic, whose conversation in their unrestrained intercourse must have bestowed on him advantages which Plautus never enjoyed. But perhaps the circ.u.mstance of his Greek original, which contributed so much to his learning and refinement, and qualified him for such exalted society, may have been unfavourable to that native purity of Latin diction, which the Umbrian slave imbibed from the unmixed fountains of conversation and nature.

The chief excellence of Plautus is generally reputed to consist in the wit and comic force of his dialogue; and, accordingly, the lines in Horace's _Art of Poetry_, in which he derides the ancient Romans for having foolishly admired the "_Plautinos sales_," has been the subject of much reprehension among critics(281). That the wit of Plautus often degenerates into buffoonery, scurrility, and quibbles,-sometimes even into obscenity,-and that, in his constant attempts at merriment, he too often tries to excite laughter by exaggerated expressions, as well as by extravagant actions, cannot, indeed, be denied. This, I think, was partly owing to the immensity of the Roman theatres, and to the masks and trumpets of the actors, which must have rendered caricature and grotesque inventions essential to the production of that due effect, which, with such scenic apparatus, could not be created, unless by overstepping the modesty of nature. It must be always be recollected, that the plays of Plautus were written solely to be represented, and not to be read. Even in modern times, and subsequently to the invention of printing, the greatest dramatists-Shakspeare, for example-cared little about the publication of their plays; and in every age or country, in which dramatic poetry has flourished, it has been intended for public representation, and has been adapted to the taste of a promiscuous audience. It is the most social of all sorts of composition; and he who aims at popularity or success in it, must leave the solitudes of inspiration for the bustle of the world.

The contemplative poet may find his delight, and his reward, in the mere effort of imagination, but the poet of the drama must seek them in the applause of the mult.i.tude. He must stoop to men-be the mover of human hearts-and triumph by the living and hourly pa.s.sions of our nature. Now, in the days of Plautus, the smiles of the polite critic were not enough for a Latin comedian, because in those days there were few polite critics at Rome; he required the shouts and laughter of the mult.i.tude, who could be fully gratified only by the broadest grins of comedy. Accordingly, many of the jests of Plautus are such as might be expected from a writer anxious to accommodate himself to the taste of the times, and naturally catching the spirit of ribaldry which prevailed.

During the age of Plautus, and indeed long after it, the general character of Roman wit consisted rather in a rude and not very liberal satire, than a just and temperate ridicule, restrained within the bounds of decency and good manners. A favourite topic, for example, of ancient raillery, was corporal defects;-a decisive proof of coa.r.s.eness of humour, especially as it was recommended by rule, and enforced by the authority of the greatest masters, as one of the most legitimate sources of ridicule.-"Est deformitatis et corporis vitiorum satis bella materies ad jocandum," says Cicero, in his treatise _De Oratore_(282). The innumerable jests there recorded as having produced the happiest effects at the bar, are the most miserable puns and quibbles, coa.r.s.e practical jokes, or personal reflections. The cause of this defect in elegance of wit and raillery, has been attributed by Hurd to the free and popular const.i.tution of Rome.

This, by placing all its citizens, at least during certain periods, on a level, and diffusing a general spirit of independence, took off those restraints of civility which are imposed by the dread of displeasing, and which can alone curb the licentiousness of ridicule. The only court to be paid was from the orators to the people, in the continual and immediate applications to them which were rendered necessary by the form of government. On such occasions, the popular a.s.semblies had to be entertained with those gross banters, which were likely to prove most acceptable to them. Design growing into habit, the orators, and after them the nation, accustomed themselves to coa.r.s.e ridicule at all times, till the humour pa.s.sed from the rostrum, or forum, to the theatre, where the amus.e.m.e.nt and laughter of the people being the direct and immediate aim, it was heightened to still farther extravagance. This taste, says Hurd, was also fostered and promoted at Rome by the festal license which prevailed in the seasons of the Baccha.n.a.lia and Saturnalia(283).

Quintilian thinks, that, with some regulation, those days of periodical license might have aided the cultivation of a correct spirit of raillery; but, as it was, they tended to vitiate and corrupt it. The Roman muse, too, had been nurtured amid satiric and rustic exhibitions, the remembrance of which was still cherished, and a recollection of them kept alive, by the popular _Exodia_ and _Fabulae Atellanae_.

Such being the taste of the audience whom he had to please, and who crowded to the theatre not to acquire purity of taste, but to relax their minds with merriment and jest, it became the great object of Plautus to make his audience laugh; and for this he sacrificed every other consideration. "Nec quicquam," says Scaliger, "veritus est, modo auditorem excitaret risu." With this view, he must have felt that he was more likely to succeed by emulating the broader mirth of the old or middle comedy, than by the delicate railleries and exquisite painting of Menander.

Accordingly, though he generally borrowed his plots from the writers of the new comedy, his wit and humour have more the relish of the old, and they have been cla.s.sed by Cicero as of the same description with the drollery which enlivened its scenes(284). The audience, for whom the plays of Plautus were written, could understand or enjoy only a representation of the manners and witticisms to which they were accustomed. To the fastidious critics of the court of Augustus, an admirer of Plautus might have replied in the words of Antiphanes, a Greek dramatist of the middle comedy, who being commanded to read one of his plays to Alexander the Great, and finding that the production was not relished by the royal critic, thus addressed him: "I cannot wonder that you disapprove of my comedy, for he who could be entertained by it must have been present at the scenes it represents. _He must be acquainted with the public humours of our vulgar ordinaries_-have been familiar with the impure manners of our courtezans-a party in the breaking up of many a brothel-and a sufferer, as well as actor, in those unseemly riots. Of all these things you are not informed; and the fault lies more in my presumption in intruding them on your hearing, than in any want of fidelity with which I have portrayed them(285)."

Indeed, this practice of consulting the tastes of the people, if it be a fault, is one which is common to all comic writers. Aristophanes, who was gifted with far higher powers than Plautus, and who was no less an elegant poet than a keen satirist, as is evinced by the lyric parts of his _Frogs_, often prost.i.tuted his talents to the lowest gratifications of the mult.i.tude. Shakspeare regarded the drama as entirely a thing for the people, and treated it as such throughout. He took the popular comedy as he found it; and whatever enlargements or improvements he introduced on the stage, were still calculated and contrived according to the spirit of his predecessors, and the taste of a London audience. When, in Charles's days, a ribald taste became universal in England, "unhappy Dryden" bowed down his genius to the times. Even in the refined age of Louis XIV., it was said of the first comic genius of his country, that he would have attained the perfection of his art,

"_Si moins ami du peuple_ en ses doctes peintures, Il n'eut point fait souvent grimacer ses figures, Quitte, pour le bouffon, l'agreable et le fin, Et, sans honte, a Terence allie Tabarin."

BOILEAU.

Lopez de Vega, in his _Arte de hacer Comedias_, written, in 1609, at the request of a poetical academy, and containing a code of laws for the modern drama, admits, that when he was about to write a comedy, he laid aside all dramatic precepts, and wrote solely for the vulgar, who had to pay for their amus.e.m.e.nt:

"Quando he de escribir una comedia, Encierro los preceptos con seis llaves; Saco a Terencio y Plauto de mi studio Para que no den voces, porque suele Dar gritos la verdad en libios mudos; Y escribo por el arte que inventaron Los que el vulgar aplauso pretendieron, Porque como los paga el vulgo, es justo Hablarle in necio para darle gusto."

His indulgent conformity, however, to the unpolished taste of his age, ought not to be admitted as an excuse for the obscenities which Plautus has introduced. But though it must be confessed, that he is liable to some censure in this particular, he is not nearly so culpable as has been generally imagined. The commentators, indeed, have been often remarkably industrious in finding out allusions, which do not consist very clearly with the plain and obvious meaning of the context. The editor of the Delphin Plautus has not rejected above five pages from the twenty plays on this account; and many pa.s.sages even in those could hardly offend the most scrupulous reader. Some of the comedies, indeed, as the _Captivi_ and _Trinummus_, are free from any moral objection; and, with the exception of the _Casina_, none of them are so indelicate as many plays of Ma.s.singer and Ford, in the time of James I., or Etheridge and Shadwell, during the reigns of Charles II. and his successor.

It being the great aim of Plautus to excite the merriment of the rabble, he, of course, was little anxious about the strict preservation of the dramatic unities; and it was a more important object with him to bring a striking scene into view, than to preserve the unity of place. In the _Aulularia_, part of the action is laid in the miser's dwelling, and part in the various places where he goes to conceal his treasure: in the _Mostellaria_ and _Truculentus_, the scene changes from the street to apartments in different houses.

But, notwithstanding these and other irregularities, Plautus so enchanted the people by the drollery of his wit, and the buffoonery of his scenes, that he continued the reigning favourite of the stage long after the more correct plays of Caecilius, Afranius, and even Terence, were first represented.

CaeCILIUS,

who was originally a slave, acquired this name with his freedom, having been at first called by the servile appellation of Statius(286). He was a native of Milan, and flourished towards the end of the sixth century of Rome, having survived Ennius, whose intimate friend he was, about one year, which places his death in 586. We learn from the prologue to the _Hecyra_ of Terence, spoken in the person of Ambivius, the princ.i.p.al actor, or rather manager of the theatre, that, when he first brought out the plays of Caecilius, some were hissed off the stage, and others hardly stood their ground; but knowing the fluctuating fortunes of dramatic exhibitions, he had again attempted to bring them forward. His perseverance having obtained for them a full and unprejudiced hearing, they failed not to please; and this success excited the author to new efforts in the poetic art, which he had nearly abandoned in a fit of despondency. The comedies of Caecilius, which amounted to thirty, are all lost, so that our opinion of their merits can be formed only from the criticisms of those Latin authors who wrote before they had perished.

Cicero blames the improprieties of his style and language(287). From Horace's Epistle to Augustus, we may collect what was the popular sentiment concerning Caecilius-

"Vincere Caecilius gravitate-Terentius arte."

It is not easy to see how a comic author could be more grave than Terence; and the quality applied to a writer of this cast appears of rather difficult interpretation. But the opinion which had been long before given by Varro affords a sort of commentary on Horace's expression-"In argumentis," says he, "Caecilius palmam poscit; in ethesi Terentius." By _gravitas_, therefore, as applied to Caecilius, we may properly enough understand the grave and affecting plots of his comedies; which is farther confirmed by what Varro elsewhere observes of him-"_Pathe_ Trabea, Attilius, et Caecilius facile moverunt." Velleius Paterculus joins him with Terence and Afranius, whom he reckons the most excellent comic writers of Rome-"Dulcesque Latini leporis facetiae per Caecilium, Terentiumque, et Afranium, sub pari aetate, nituerunt(288)."

A great many of the plays of Caecilius were taken from Menander; and Aulus Gellius informs us that they seemed agreeable and pleasing enough, till, being compared with their Greek models, they appeared quite tame and disgusting, and the wit of the original, which they were unable to imitate, totally vanished(289). He accordingly contrasts a scene in the _Plocius_ (or Necklace,) of Caecilius, with the corresponding scene in Menander, and p.r.o.nounces them to be as different in brightness and value as the arms of Diomed and Glaucus. The scenes compared are those where an old husband complains that his wife, who was rich and ugly, had obliged him to sell a handsome female slave, of whom she was jealous. This chapter of Aulus Gellius is very curious, as it gives us a more perfect notion than we obtain from any other writer, of the mode in which the Latin comic poets copied the Greeks. To judge from this single comparison, it appears that though the Roman dramatists imitated the incidents, and caught the ideas of their great masters, their productions were not entirely translations or slavish versions: A different turn is frequently given to a thought-the sentiments are often differently expressed, and sometimes much is curtailed, or altogether omitted.

AFRANIUS,

though he chose Roman subjects, whence his comedies were called _Togatae_, was an imitator of the manner of Menander-

"Dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro."

Indeed he himself admits, in his _Compitales_, that he derived many even of his plots from Menander and other Greek writers-

"Fateor, sumpsi non a Menandro modo, Sed ut quisque habuit, quod conveniret mihi; Quod me non posse melius facere credidi."

Cicero(290) calls Afranius an ingenious and eloquent writer. Ausonius, in one of his epigrams, talks "_facundi Afrani_." He is also praised by Quintilian, who censures him, however, for the flagitious amours which he represented on the stage(291), on account of which, perhaps, his writings were condemned to the flames by Pope Gregory I. The t.i.tles of forty-six of his plays have been collected by Fabricius, and a few fragments have been edited by Stephens. One of these, in the play ent.i.tled _Sella_, where it is said that wisdom is the child of experience and memory, has been commended by Aulus Gellius, and is plausibly conjectured(292) to have been introduced in a prologue spoken in the person of Wisdom herself-

"Usus me genuit, mater peperit Memoria: Sophiam vocant me Graii; vos Sapientiam."