TERENCE AND HIS SUCCESSORS
Plautus lived in the most productive period of Roman comedy. He happens
to mention only one rival, the aged Naevius, but from later sources we
learn of Caecilius, Licinius, Trabea, Atilius, Titinius, and others who
apparently began to write before the death of Plautus. That all of these
actually staged plays we may be sure, since manuscripts had no chance of
surviving unless they came into the official archives by way of purchase
for production. So numerous were the old manuscripts in these archives
that Plautus, who could at most not have written more than thirty or
forty plays, was later credited with a hundred and thirty. Apparently
unsigned plays were attributed to him because of the commercial value
of his name. But the fact that so many stray plays were in existence is
significant of the activity of writers. It is not surprising therefore
that a guild of “writers and actors” flourished in the days of Plautus,
and that the state recognized it and assigned it quarters on the Aventine.
Of the earlier men from whose works we have fragments, only two are in
any way individualized in the scant remains. Titinius, who seems to have
been a late rival of Plautus, was so thoroughly lost to his successors
that Cicero seems not to have been aware of him. But Varro refers to
Titinius in high terms in his work on the Latin language, written
while he was gathering books for Caesar’s projected public library.
Varro probably was the man who ferreted out his plays and name from the
aediles’ archives. It is signal praise that Varro gives Titinius when
he places him by the side of Terence as a delineator of character. An
allusion to one of his plays by Horace seems to indicate that some of
his work was actually staged in the early Empire (more than a hundred
years after the dramatist’s death) for the poet refers to a scene that is
visualized rather than to a line read, and he assumes that Augustus will
recognize his allusion.[1]
What Titinius did was to follow a suggestion made by Naevius and write
original comedies (_togatae_) with native plots, scenes, and characters.
When we recall how Plautus found it prudent to cling to Greek plots for
social and moral reasons, we see that Titinius must have had a vein of
daring. That he was lauded among the very foremost for characterization
is the more remarkable since he did not adapt characters already well
outlined. It was no easy task to present before the old Catonian society
comedies revolving about Roman men and women, and to rival the plays of
Plautus which could legitimately appropriate all the attractive plots of
Hellenistic Athens. Donatus remarks naïvely that realistic Roman comedy
of the old day, unlike the Greek comedy, could not picture slaves as
more clever than their masters. This statement, of course, does not go
to the heart of the matter, but it is one way of saying that the Romans,
who insisted on social decorum in home life, were in no mood to see
themselves pictured as the gulls of spoiled sons and saucy slaves. If the
togata had to eliminate all such scenes, it must have altered the whole
tone of comedy. But that was not all. We have noticed how Plautus was
compelled to change and attenuate feminine rôles because the Romans had
nothing to put in the place of the semi-respectable Greek hetaerae with
whom the youth of Athens associated freely. What was there for Titinius
to do in writing Roman plays? It was out of the question to insult the
dignity of the noble household with stories of boisterous love affairs;
and yet he apparently did not wish to sacrifice such plots either by
avoiding the female characters or by using those that Roman society
disdained. He did want the love story and he wanted it both wholesome
enough to attract Rome and natural enough to give a free play of emotions
in an active plot, and he found it in a way that Plautus had not. He
abandoned the _jeunesse dorée_ of the standard Greek play and resorted to
the natural and free society of the Italian village communities outside
of the great capital, where, as in Italian villages of today, honest
young men and women of humble circumstances worked together at daily
tasks in shops, at counters, desks, and work benches. Titinius made a
real discovery when he left the artificial society of aristocratic Rome
because it gave no opportunity for treating of natural relations between
the unmarried young of both sexes and went out into the near-by villages
of Latium or the humbler streets of the city where more normal conditions
obtained. He was perhaps the first writer of Roman comedy who could
draw his material from life and still base his comedy on a love story.
Only fifteen titles of his plays have survived, but nine of these take
their name from the leading female characters in the plays: _The Maid of
Setia_, _The Lady of the Dye Shop_, _The Girl of Velitrae_, _The Twin
Sister_, _The Girl Who Knows Something about the Law_, _The Stepmother_,
_Pyrrha the Weaver_, _The Dancing Girl of Ferentinum_, _The Flute-player_
and _The Girl of Ulubrae_. These heroines are folk in humble life but
the fragments show that they are none the less sprightly, quick-witted
and interesting creatures. Today we are sadly at a loss in trying to
comprehend the life of the great masses of the people during the Plautine
period. Plautus in his re-shapings of Greek plots reflects it only in
his suppressions and intimations, and then very imperfectly. Livy in his
dignified and voluminous history of this period strides majestically
over it. We would gladly surrender much of both for the faithful and
sympathetic picture that a volume of Titinius could give us. If Varro’s
judgment was right in lauding the power of characterization of this
author we might, if he were rescued, find him a place by the side of very
modern realists.
Caecilius Statius is the other writer of comedy vying with Plautus of
whom something is known, and he too deserves to be remembered with a keen
hope that his works may some day come to light. He was more orthodox than
Titinius, kept, like Plautus, more or less close to his Greek models,
and obeyed the same social purpose of not offending puritanic taste by
dressing his players in Greek garb. Strange to say, he was a Celt, the
first in the history of literature. He had apparently been captured as a
boy somewhere near Milan when the Romans were campaigning there during
the Hannibalic war. That he was not a mere child at the time becomes
evident from the fact that he never wrote Latin quite well enough to suit
the discriminating ear of Cicero—who otherwise read him with pleasure.
Yet he somehow received a good education—as bright slaves often did—for
he knew Greek well. He also got his freedom somehow and became a close
associate of Ennius. He lived long enough to give aid to Terence in the
production of that young man’s first youthful play, the _Andria_, and was
generous enough to recommend the play to the aediles when they hesitated
to accept it. Ambivius, the loyal producer of Terence, remarks in one
of the prologues which he spoke for Terence that Caecilius had had a
discouraging series of rejections in his youth but that he, Ambivius,
confident of the poet’s worth, had persisted in presenting the plays till
success was assured.[2] A later critic, Volcacius—who, to be sure, takes
no account of the togatae in this particular list—places Caecilius at
the very head of the writers of comedy, giving Plautus second place and
Terence sixth. Unfortunately we do not happen to know whether this critic
was a man of sound judgment.
The plays of Caecilius were constructed much like those of Plautus, with
the same dependence upon the Greeks in plot, and with the same devotion
to Roman musical accompaniment and to arial monodies. His use of the
splendidly rhythmical trochaic septenarii is everywhere noticeable in
the fragments. Varro suggests that Caecilius was esteemed rather for
his melodramatic effects than for his ability to create characters, in
this matter regarding him less highly than Terence, and praises him
especially for the composition of his plots. Just why Varro admired his
plots he did not say, but if, as we may suspect, Caecilius was the first
dramatist to abandon the Greek and early Roman manner of disclosing the
trend of the plot in prologues and to focus the interest of his comedies
more upon suspense and surprise, Varro’s judgment would be justified.
We make this suggestion because, as we shall explain, Terence’s methods
were unconventional in this respect, and Terence in writing his comedies
had had the advice of Caecilius. If Caecilius was an innovator in this
matter, it would account not only for Varro’s high opinion of his plots
but also for the fact that Caecilius failed at first to attract an
audience used to explicit preparation. In the end, however, Caecilius
succeeded and it would seem that he wore well. Manuscripts of his plays
apparently were dug out of the archives early for restaging, and revivals
were frequent. Cicero knew his works well enough to quote from several of
them even when far from his library. Horace alludes to a character of his
in the _Ars Poetica_, and in the second-century craze for the early Latin
authors Caecilius kept his place among the foremost.
The six plays of Terence are so well known that little need be said by
way of general characterization. It is generally supposed that they are
more faithful paraphrases of Greek originals than any of the Plautine
comedies. This idea, based partly upon the fact that Terence used the
older Greek dramatic form instead of adopting the Plautine custom of
introducing cantica, and partly upon the fact that Donatus’ commentary
mentions relatively few departures from the Greek, is probably correct.
There is also good reason for supposing that Terence might care to
reproduce his Greek model with more fidelity than Plautus could. Society
had changed so much between 200 and 160 B.C. that the Greek plays could
be presented without alteration, even to the point of placing on the
stage attractive hetaerae. Moreover, education was general enough so that
cultivated persons desired more finished plays and an elimination of some
of the Plautine downrightness. The plays of Terence though less amusing
than those of Plautus are on a higher literary plane and much of their
beauty undoubtedly savors of the delicate humanity that may be found in
the recently discovered plays of Menander. Nevertheless we must wait till
the actual models of Terence’s comedies are discovered before we deny
these graces to Terence himself. We happen to know from Donatus that
three of the characters of the _Andria_ were introduced by Terence into
his paraphrase of a Menandrian plot. While the rôles are somewhat stilted
the characters give expression to some of those penetrating observations
that critics are wont to attribute to the original.[3] This proves that
Terence was himself capable of very delicate feeling, and until we find
his originals it is therefore scientifically defensible to acknowledge
Terence as the possible source of some of the best passages in these six
comedies.
It has frequently been noticed[4] that the writers of the New Comedy,
including Plautus, were far more generous than present-day dramatists
in “preparing” their audiences for every turn in the plot and that they
depended less for their effects upon the elements of “suspense” and
“surprise.” It is generally assumed that the expository prologue was
adopted by comedy from tragedy in order that the unlettered spectators
who crowded the theater at the festivals should not have any difficulty
in following the play. It has also been noted repeatedly that when the
interest of the play did not rest in comic situations, buffoonery,
ludicrous characters, and the like, but rather in an intricate plot that
was solved at the end by a “recognition” or some other unforeseen event,
it was necessary to introduce an omniscient “prologue” to explain the
situation in an expository monologue. Superhumans like Heros, Agnoia,
Elenchus, Tyche, Aer, Auxilium, Arcturus, Fides, and Lar were used, or
an abstract “prologus” who could be conceived of as knowing not only the
complete situation but also the outcome of the play. Only when the plot
was so simple that it unfolded without risk of misconception, could the
exposition be trusted to characters or expository dialogue within the
play.
Such observations may be accepted as correct so far as they go. However,
they do not sufficiently explain the controlling purpose of over-explicit
preparation, the consequences of it in dramatic effect, and a noticeable
endeavor in Terence’s day to break loose from the limitations of the
device. It is doubtful, for example, whether suspense and surprise were
avoided merely because of certain intellectual limitations on the part of
Menander’s spectators; indeed it is probable that explicit “preparation”
was a convention that held the boards without serious objection till
Terence experimented in a new method.
Greek New Comedy was shaped in the fourth century for audiences
accustomed to the dramatic technique developed upon the tragic stage.
Antiphanes reveals clearly in a well-known passage what the audience
expected (Kock, II, _Antiphanes_ 191): “Fortunate the task of the tragic
poet! Before a word is spoken, the spectator knows the theme ... at the
mere mention of the name Oedipus he knows the rest.” Then he proceeds
to say that the writer of comedy had to prepare the audience in every
detail, since if a single item was missed the spectator started to hiss.
This reveals the fact that in viewing a comedy the spectator expected
not only to know the situation but also to have a clear clue to the
solution, just as he had when viewing tragedies. The well-known prologues
of Euripides did not have to foretell as well as prepare; a prologue in
tragedy needed at most to remind the spectators of the main outline of
the tale and to show the point at which action started. Euripides was
well aware that most of his audience would at once know what the end
of the story would be.[5] Now if the outcome was foreseen, the ancient
dramatist, unlike the modern, could obviously not make free use of
suspense and surprise. The writer of tragedy had to draw his emotional
values from the pity of a well-informed audience viewing “with a sense of
fear or dread” the groping of characters involved in the meshes of fate.
Thus the obvious consequence of the use of a known plot was of course
dependence upon the theme of _fate_, the constant employment of gloomy
foreshadowing, the use with frequent reiteration of what has been called
“tragic irony.” There seems to be a feeling in Aristotle that “pity and
dread” are the essential elements of tragedy, but it is safe to say that
had Greek tragedy frequently used invented plots Aristotle would have
found that sympathetic suspense with catastrophic surprise would rather
have been employed to produce the tragic catharsis, and would have been
equally effective.
In studying the new comedy we may assume with Antiphanes, and on the
basis of Menander, that the writer thought out his plot in terms of this
well-established technique. In that case an omniscient prologue must
give the situation and give it more explicitly than in tragedy because
he had to do much more than remind. He must present the whole situation
and in addition he must give explicit hints of the solution, if the
spectator was to have the same advantage as he had in tragedy where the
solution was a matter of common knowledge. That is the new element forced
upon the writer of comedy by fifth-century convention. In Menander’s
_Perikeiromene_, for example, the deferred prologue, Agnoia, not only
gives the situation but adds: “this was done ... in order to start the
train of revelations, so that in time these people might discover their
kin.”
So in Plautus, wherever we have an intricate play that develops to a
conclusion which could not be revealed by the characters, the prologue,
if it has survived, discloses the outcome to the audience. In the
_Poenulus_ the prologus anticipates the solution when he says (line 245)
that the father will come and find his daughter. In the _Rudens_ the
North Star not only has seen all that has occurred before the opening
scene but he reveals the secret of the last act by saying that the girl
is the old man’s daughter, and that the lover will appear presently (33
ff. and 80). In the _Amphitruo_, Mercury, one of the actors, can serve
as prologue because he is omniscient. He tells the spectators how to
distinguish the characters and says (140-48) that _Amphitruo_ is about
to come. The rest was known to the audience because this play, like the
tragedies, was based upon a myth. In the _Aulularia_, the Spirit of the
Hearth narrates what it is necessary to know of the past and then adds,
“I shall make our neighbor propose marriage to the girl so as to compel
the young man to do so” (31 ff.). In the _Captives_ the prologue informs
us that Tyndarus is Hegio’s unrecognized son who will come into his own
presently and that the other son will also be found. The prologue of the
_Casina_ concludes the exposition by the revelation that the girl will
turn out to be a freeborn citizen.
And this regard for the fullest preparation of the audience goes far
beyond the prologue and the expository first act. Most of the intrigues
devised to further the action are first explained, or at least discussed
or suggested before they are actually carried out. Any student of Plautus
will think of scores of examples: of how Mercury tells the spectators
that he is going to climb to the roof to mock at Amphitruo (997), how in
the _Miles_ the plan to rescue the girl is explained before it is carried
out, how in the _Poenulus_ (550) the trick by which the slave-dealer is
to be imposed upon is worked out on the stage before it is played,[6] etc.
Now of course this sort of exposition is too explicit to satisfy modern
taste.[7] It is sometimes excused with the reminder that ancient comedies
were written for a single performance and must be understood at first
presentation without the aid of reviewers’ comments or playbills; and
it is sometimes explained as a concession to witless audiences—on whom
Horace, following Peripatetic critics, blamed most literary crudities.
Such explanations sufficed in the days when we could attribute this
undue explicitness to Plautus, but now that we have discovered Menander
given to the same type of technique we ought to look farther. The
important fact seems to be that the Greek audience was accustomed to
preparation and to the devices which the consequent construction of the
play demanded, and that the originators of the early New Comedy followed
custom. And since in tragedy the general knowledge of the myths used in
the plots obviated use of unexpected catastrophes and compelled writers
to find compensation in tragic irony, so the adoption of the same
method of plot construction for comedy eliminated the use of tension
and increased the employment of a kind of comic irony. The effects of
this comic irony range all the way from what Aristotle terms educated
insolence (πεπαιδευμένη ὕβρις) to genial and sympathetic fellow-feeling,
according as the victim of the delusion is a villain, a braggart, a
buffoon, or a harmless innocent. The foreknowledge which the audience has
of what the players are unconsciously stumbling into provides both the
“sense of superiority,” which Plato found to be an effect of comedy, and
the enjoyment of the incongruous which moderns have often considered its
chief ingredient. This comic irony, concocted like its counterpart in
tragedy, is a large part of the stock in trade of Menander and of Plautus.
In the _Captives_ of Plautus the audience knows that Hegio has his own
son before him in chains, and notices that, not recognizing his son, he
causes him much suffering. Throughout the play the attentive spectator
will watch for the very effective incongruities that arise from the
father’s ignorance. In the _Rudens_, Daemones, not knowing that the girl
who is trying to escape from shipwreck and the slave-dealer is his own
daughter, at first seems to the informed spectator extremely insensitive
to her suffering. The father’s sympathies are aroused only indirectly
by his religious respect for a suppliant at the altar, then by the
accident of being called in to arbitrate regarding her basket of birth
tokens. Only when he has established her civil status by this accidental
judgment does he learn the truth. In a more farcical form comic irony is
freely used in the plays of self-deception, for example in the case of a
bragging coward like the _Miles Gloriosus_, or in plays depending upon
mistaken identity or some similar delusion, as in the _Menaechmi_ and the
_Amphitruo_. And in very nearly all the plays of Plautus, if it be not
the chief mainstay of the plot, it appears at least here and there.
The new fragments of Menander prove that Menander had frequently
constructed his plays with this effect in mind. Indeed it is the
decisive factor in all that are extensive enough to permit of analysis.
In the _Arbitrants_ Smicrines all unconsciously arbitrates against his
own child. In the _Samia_ the old man is misled by a chance remark
into the belief that his son has betrayed him, and the resulting
irony runs through the central part of the play. And even when the
facts are disclosed the son immediately sets going another series of
misunderstandings (disclosed beforehand to the audience, line 432)
by threatening to go into exile. The _Perikeiromene_ is built about
the same device. Two men are in love with the same maiden. One is her
unrecognized brother, the other is jealous of her attentions to the
former. The girl knows that the former is her brother but may not reveal
the fact. However, the deity, Agnoia, has informed the spectators of the
relationship so that they are in a position to view the intricate play
at cross-purposes, but there is little of what we should call suspense
because they have also been informed that a recognition scene will end
the play satisfactorily.
In the _Hero_ the expository prologue is lost, but we know that the
prologue was the omniscient _Heros_, who adequately prepared the audience
for what was to follow.[8] Here a husband (unrecognized), his wife,
their “exposed daughter,” not yet known as such, and two lovers of this
daughter, one a slave, the other a rich neighbor, all enter a tangle
of delusion to which the audience has the key. In the _Georgos_ a man
expresses to a woman his desire to marry her daughter. He does not know
that he is the girl’s father. As the woman—bound to secrecy—stands
wringing her hands in despair, the audience—apparently informed of the
secret—experiences a situation as poignant as that of the _Oedipus_. And
finally in the Petrograd fragment of the _Phasma_ we find a mother’s
furtive visits to her daughter, born out of wedlock, and an entangled
love affair, a situation which again involves the use of irony, since a
fragment from the prologue shows us that the audience has been informed
in advance.
It would be hazardous to say that Menander always lets the spectator
into the secret beforehand so as to make use of dramatic irony, but it
is striking that he does so in every instance where we possess enough
of his plot in the original to test his methods. It is apparently his
usual method of procedure. This is also in accord with his well-known
predilection for Tyche, the counterpart in comedy of tragic fate. We
need not suppose, as has often been done, that his constant reference
to Tyche springs from his own philosophical doctrine. Such well-known
passages as “Chance holds the helm; mortal forethought is but a delusion”
(_Frag._, Kock, 482), etc., are, of course, comments of characters in
the play. They need not be expressions of the dramatist’s own creed.
But such comments would naturally come frequently in plays built on the
conventional tragic form which required that the players grope their
obscure way through the action in front of an audience which knew the end.
Now these observations are not meant as an attempt to rehabilitate
Leo’s doctrine that the New Comedy merely borrowed all its devices of
prologue, fate, recognition, and the rest from tragedy. Prescott’s
incisive criticism[9] of that view must stand, with its insistence that
we take Sicilian antecedents, Aristophanes, and environment into account.
The new comedy was hardly as helplessly unoriginal as Leo held. The
problem we have raised should rather be approached from the viewpoint
of what the spectator expected and desired. It did not necessarily
arise in the construction of plotless farces, in the presentation of
ludicrous situations, buffoonery, and scenes centering about comical and
preposterous characters. When, however, the plot was involved and a long
consistent story was to be unraveled, the spectators, who knew nothing
of the story, desired to be put at the same point of vantage early in
the play that they naturally enjoyed when an _Oedipus_, a _Medea_, or an
_Orestes_ was presented.
When we turn to the Roman stage we seem to discover an attempt to break
away from this convention, if not in Plautus[10] at least in Terence.
We do not find conclusive evidence that Plautus seriously changed the
construction of the Greek plots which he used except to remove the choral
interludes and turn the plays into musical comedies, though it is likely
that he usually avoided plays that had very intricate plots, and chose
freely from those that contained laughter-producing situations. There is
no evidence that he sought for suspense, or revamped any of his originals
in order to attain it.
Terence, however, despite his fondness for the Greek originals and his
outspoken claim of fidelity to them, seems consciously to have striven
for a suspended dénouement. He does not entirely suppress dramatic
irony, but he reduces its scope, he eliminates the expository prologue
completely, he is chary about giving information to the spectator,
preferring to keep him under tension for a part if not for the whole of
the play.
A brief reference to the _Adelphoe_, his last play, will best reveal his
procedure. Here two brothers employ different methods in bringing up
their sons. Micio, who has adopted one of Demea’s sons, is indulgent,
Demea is severe. Both boys enjoy themselves, Micio’s confessedly,
Demea’s secretly. In fact the latter throws the burden of his escapades
on Micio’s son. Hence when the action begins (1. 182) Demea is found
scolding Micio because Micio’s son is setting a bad example to his
supposedly virtuous brother. This is completely in Menander’s ironic
style, for, as we shall see, Menander in the original had a prologue
informing the audience that Demea’s son was the rascal of the two boys.
In Terence’s version, however, there is no expository prologue; the
audience does not yet know the secret that Demea’s son is the source
of the mischief. The irony is not wholly lost to those who have a
good enough memory to recall half an hour later how misplaced Demea’s
rebukes actually were. Terence is accumulating effects by suspending
the revelation which Menander gave at once. But he goes even further
in increasing tension. The prologue of the original had explained the
bold deed that started the action, namely, that Micio’s son, in order
to aid his brother, had forcibly taken from the slave-dealer the girl
whom his brother loved but had not the money to buy or the courage to
steal. That fact had to be presented somehow, so Terence, according to
Donatus, inserts a scene in Act II which conveys the desired impression.
Characteristically Terence still withholds the crucial fact that the boy
is committing this crime not for himself but for his brother. Perhaps
the shrewder spectators would suspect the truth. In Menander’s play
they knew it from the first and laughed at Demea’s misplaced boasts. In
Terence’s adaptation, however, they continue in doubt. It is not till a
fourth of the play is over that Terence solves this mystery. He holds
it back so long indeed that there is danger that the spectator may go
too far on a mistaken clue. After the revelation, however, the audience,
acquainted with a situation that Demea still fails to comprehend, can
proceed for several scenes to enjoy the dramatic irony involved in this
circumstance.
But Terence has one more surprise in store at the very end, to which
Donatus again supplies the clue for us. At the end of the play Menander
had suggested a partial conversion of Demea, while Micio went smiling
to the final scene. Not so Terence. Writing for a more puritanic Roman
audience, he felt the need of giving an appreciable rebuke to Micio for
his lack of principle, and hence compelled him by way of consistency in
his easy generosity to marry an unattractive widow.[11] In other words,
with a minimum of changes in his paraphrase, Terence, without greatly
reducing the dramatic irony inherent in the separate scenes, has so
adapted a standard Menandrian plot based upon self-delusion (for which
the spectator is prepared) that the elements of suspense and surprise
have become vital factors. This seems to me to be Terence’s favorite
procedure.
In the _Andria_, which was Terence’s first play, he apparently reveals
the first hesitating attempt at this mode of constructing comedies. He
tells us in the preface that he used Menander’s _Andria_ in the main with
suggestions from the _Perinthia_, and the Menandrian fragments of these
two plays which can be identified in Terence are fairly well scattered
through the _Andria_. Donatus states that the rôles of Charinus, Byrrhia,
and Sosia were added by Terence. Charinus and Byrrhia are so involved
in the action of five central scenes that Terence must have re-shaped
the play very much in order to include these characters. Since in a
recognition scene near the end the heroine turns out to be a citizen
we now have a right to assume that Menander’s _Andria_ probably had a
prologue revealing this fact. Terence omits the prologue and, therefore,
the usual key. But he does not dare, as in the _Hecyra_, his next play,
to rely upon his audience’s being patient until the recognition scene.
In the middle of the second act (line 221) he drops the rather broad
hint in a monologue: “they have set the story going that the girl is an
Athenian.” That would be enough to prevent the spectators from following
false leads. The _Andria_, therefore, seems to reveal Terence’s first
attempt at constructing a play in which a deferred hint took the place
of full preparation. One wonders whether the aged Caecilius, who helped
Terence with this play, may have used the device before Terence and
suggested it to him.
In the _Hecyra_, the second play of Terence, there is no preparation,
and the delay in relieving the tension of the spectator is carried to
extreme lengths. The old story of a maiden violated at the festival
during a dark night provides the entanglement. In the end the guilty
father of her child turns out to be the very man she has married.
Even through the Latin text one can see that the early scenes of the
original[12] presupposed an informed audience enjoying the delusions of
characters working on mistaken suppositions. But Terence blotted out the
information by deleting the prologue of the original. The semi-expository
first act gives the immediate situation but reserves the key-fact for
line 829 near the end of the play. If that fact—that the unknown violator
was Pamphilus, the husband—had been revealed to the spectators at the
beginning they might have enjoyed the dramatic irony of the scene (II,
1) in which Laches scolds his wife for imagined wrongs, and especially
the incongruity of Pamphilus’ oath, by all that is sacred, that he is
not to blame for the separation (line 476). Terence has done a very
daring thing here in keeping the audience in doubt and in anxiety. He
has assumed that the audience will patiently bear in mind these puzzling
quarrels and asseverations and watch the mysteries accumulating without
any key to the solution for several hundred lines. A modern, used to
that kind of thing in detective stories, finds it less difficult to
do, but our students usually have to read the _Hecyra_ with unusually
alert attention, and it is certain that they would miss much of the
delicate play if they were to see it hurriedly acted on the stage without
previous preparation. In fact, Terence commits the sin of hinting at
incorrect solutions. Pamphilus (at line 260) learns of the child and only
betrays bewilderment, which is apt to mislead the spectator; at line
517 Pamphilus’ father also learns of the child but draws an incorrect
conclusion, giving a new starting point for a possible erroneous guess;
at line 577 his mother, half-informed, imagines that her son has deserted
his wife for ugly reasons. Only at line 827 does the resolution of the
intrigue take place. There is not one ancient play before the day of
Terence, so far as we know, where an audience was left in such complete
suspense before an accumulating mass of perplexities; and this was
an audience, it will be remembered, accustomed to be taken into the
confidence of the prologue. It is not surprising, therefore, that this
play—one of the most human in the classical repertoire—failed twice,
and that the spectators rushed away from it to see a boxing match. But
Terence apparently was proud of what he had done and insisted that the
play have its chance. Only after he had established his reputation by the
success of the _Eunuchus_ was it at last played with success.
The _Heautontimoroumenos_, produced two years after the failure of the
_Hecyra_, puts less strain upon the audience, since half the secret—that
Clinea’s sweetheart has proved faithful and worthy of him—is disclosed
fairly early (line 243). From that point the spectators are permitted
without too much anxiety to enjoy the dramatic irony involved in the
delusions of the over-confident Chremes who bestows on his neighbor the
pity that is his own due. Soon after the middle of the play (675 ff.) the
spectators are admitted to the last important fact, namely, that Clinea’s
sweetheart is freeborn, while the impossible courtesan seems likely to
become Chremes’ daughter-in-law. Since, however, Chremes refuses to
accept the evidence of his own eyes, the self-delusion only increases the
irony, and the play continues from that point in the Menandrian style.
The play is indeed one of the best in point of construction, since by
abandoning the expository prologue[13] Terence was enabled to accumulate
mysteries which he gradually solved in such a way as to substitute
Menandrian satire for tension.
In the _Eunuchus_ Terence for once shifts to the Plautine manner, resting
his play chiefly on buffoons, imposture, and ludicrous situations. Indeed
he borrows caricatures from another play in order to cram in the fun.
There is no prologue, but none was needed. Thais stands self-revealed
from the first scene, while Pamphila’s station is more than hinted at
in the second scene. The tricking of a braggart captain did not involve
much anxiety, even though the preparation is slight. The play is full of
fun and easy to follow. Terence had for once yielded to popular demand
and he was materially rewarded. It was the only play of his that was
immediately put on a second time, and the aediles paid for it what was
then considered the very high sum of 8000 sesterces.
The _Phormio_, like the _Heauton_ and the _Adelphoe_, employs a good
mingling of suspense and preparation. There is no expository prologue.
That one existed in the original is probable from the occurrence of such
unconscious allusions to actuality as the story concocted in court that
the girl was a kinswoman (line 117). The fact that Chremes has a daughter
like the one in question is not made known to the audience till half
the play is over—a restraint which is surpassed only in the _Hecyra_.
However, from line 570 the solution is surmised and it finally is evident
at line 755. Henceforth the interest is provided by a series of quick
though unprepared-for surprises.
Whether or not Terence should have all the credit for breaking away from
the old conventional construction imposed on tragedy by the accident
that the plots were known, we cannot say. It is not likely that Menander
introduced this innovation, since all the plots that have recently been
discovered seem to retain the older construction. Plautus, except in
plays subsequently revised, like the _Epidicus_ and the _Mercator_, is
true to the convention every time that his plot is intricate and ends
with an important “discovery.” We have suggested that Caecilius, who
was Terence’s critic in his first play, may possibly have shown the way
since he somehow gained fame for his plot construction. But we have no
definite evidence of this. At any rate the modernization comes after
Plautus and seems, therefore, to be a discovery of the Roman stage. It
might be claimed that the discovery was due to the accident that the
prologue was desired for the expression of the author’s personal opinion,
so that it was not available for exposition.[14] However, this would not
explain Terence’s procedure. In the _Adelphoe_, for instance, he seems
to transfer some of the exposition from the eliminated prologue to the
opening monologue of Micio. What is noticeable is that he here gives a
very chary exposition in the monologue, gives some more details in the
inserted kidnaping scene, and yet carefully withholds the secret—which
could so easily have been disclosed—that the girl was stolen for the
supposedly virtuous brother. In a word, Terence is conscious of what he
is doing. He has apparently eliminated the expository prologue purposely
in order to rid himself of an old convention and to intensify comedy by
injecting into his plots the elements of surprise and suspense.
After Terence the aediles seem to have saved money by resorting freely
to the archives and reviving old plays. At any rate many of the Plautine
comedies bear signs of having been tampered with at this time. Long
speeches were cut, explicit prologues were excised or reduced so as to
introduce the element of surprise. In other words, the comedies were
modernized in type and given speed. It is more than likely that this
refurbishing of old plays discouraged young writers, since the generation
following Terence left few names of dramatists to posterity. Only
Turpilius, who worked in the Plautine tradition, was well known later. He
died at a very old age about 103 B.C.
The togata, however, kept its place better through the voluminous
contributions of Afranius, whose _floruit_ was just before the Gracchan
day. Of his works, praised by such fair judges as Cicero, Horace, and
Quintilian, we have some seventy titles and over six hundred lines. By
mere chance, we hear of a revival of a play of his in Caesar’s day and
of another even in Nero’s time. Rome was now cosmopolitan enough so that
a writer of comedy need not limit his range. In matter and sentiment
Afranius reminded critics of Menander and Terence, yet his fragments show
that, like Plautus, he availed himself of the advantages of very generous
musical accompaniments. The most striking reference to him which has come
down to us is that of Seneca who says that Afranius blended the spirit of
comedy and tragedy in his work. If we may judge from this statement he
may in this respect have been a precursor of Molière. After Afranius came
Atta who has left us a dozen bare titles and little else.
But legitimate comedy was doomed at Rome. On festival days the populace
had to be amused, and the Roman populace was rapidly changing in
character as slavery was pushing out free labor. Even before the Gracchan
reform Scipio the younger could face the crowds of the Forum with the
remark that most of them had come to Rome as slaves. The Gracchans
did not improve the quality of those crowds when they instituted the
corn-doles. The free manumission of slaves was creating a polyglot
proletariat which corn doles now tended to keep in the city, where they
were fed and amused. In response to the desires of such folk, chariot
races were made more exciting and the gladiatorial shows, introduced
from Campania, became more frequent and more gruesome. Needless to say
the well constructed plots of Plautus and Terence could not hold such
audiences in their seats. The aediles and praetors, who wished to keep
the entertainment on as high a level as possible, still persisted in
producing some respectable plays at every festival, but to save their
popularity in view of future elections they were driven to admit an
increasing number of the more trivial plays as well.
After Sulla’s time, though great actors like Roscius still played old
rôles, the farce gained ground over the legitimate comedy. The farce, a
more or less extemporaneous form, like the _commedia d’arte_ shaped as
much by the actors as by the authors, had long been in use as a brief
epilogue to performances of tragedies. The form most frequently used was
the so-called _Atellana_, named from an Oscan village in Campania which
was captured by Rome during the Hannibalic war. At first Oscan players
had presented these farces in the Oscan dialect. It is very likely that
the many Campanians who were trying to make a living at Rome after they
had been driven off their lands in 210 brought these amusing plays along
to produce in the Oscan “colony” of Rome, and that in time the Romans
discovered how entertaining they were and began to employ the players at
festivals. One is reminded of how the producers of Vienna and Innsbruck
have frequently invited the village players from the Tyrolese hill-towns
to give their simple homemade comedies before sophisticated urban
audiences.
The Atellan farces were usually spontaneous bits of improvised fun in
which the witty players, unhampered by a fixed text, developed their own
parts. There was much sameness of plot and rôle, usually a ridiculous
situation at the expense of some extravagant character, the fat fellow,
the old simpleton, the self-deluded wiseacre, the country bumpkin,
or what not. There was also much display of countryside wisdom and
frequently of broad and coarse wit. By Sulla’s day various city-wits—we
know the names of some and have more than a hundred titles of their
works—exploited this old form and wrote Latin farces on the Atellan
models, obeying literary conventions so far as to employ verse instead of
prose. Even Sulla, who was a devotee of the theater, tried his hand at
writing this style of comedy.
But these plays also had to give way to something lighter, namely the
mime. Simple realistic mimes had appeared at unofficial folk festivals
for many years before literature became aware of them. They avoided such
artificiality as mask and extravagant garb. They alone employed actresses
for female rôles. They got their names from their special devotion to
mimicry and caricature, but they proceeded to invade the whole field of
comedy; and had the respectable togata not been bound by convention
to exclude actresses on the stage and to adopt the mask, there is no
reason why the two should not have merged. In fact the mime came to be
a more realistic togata, and as such might have played a dignified rôle
in literature. And in Cicero’s day there were writers like Laberius and
actresses like Arbuscula and Cytheris who revealed an ambition to elevate
the mime into the region of serious art. The fate of the mime, however,
lay at the mercy of the rabble who demanded ever cheaper amusement. And
the scenario writers of the late Republic and early Empire supplied it.
They wrote plots and created female rôles that not even Arbuscula would
play, and that self-respecting Romans would not go to see. And so the
mime—which indeed lived on for centuries—fell into the class of the
tawdriest performances.
The farces and the mimes, while incapable of embodying careful
characterization or lines of any real literary value, could at their
best provide a vehicle for current ideas and a fruitful entertainment in
skilful caricature and much rollicking fun. Their descent to the lower
strata of amusement was not so much the fault of the forms as of the
audiences that determined their content. It is not surprising, therefore,
that these audiences—eager for entertainment which might exclude all
possibility of having to exercise the intellect—finally demanded an
extravaganza that appealed solely to eye and ear.
Horace lived to see and bemoan the discovery of the pantomime which, as
its name implies, was wholly mimicry, with nothing to disturb a lazy
brain. What Pylades did with tragedy, Bathyllus of Alexandria did with
comedy. He silently acted his rôles using interpretative gestures to the
accompanying rhythms of seductive music. There at last the rabble found
supreme satisfaction. But Horace at any rate in reviewing the history of
the stage did not argue that every new change had marked progress. In his
opinion the stage had descended to the lowest depth of inanity.
At Rome, as elsewhere, the drama had proved to be a fairly accurate
barometer not of the culture of the educated classes but of the populace.
Nothing in the form of official censorship had at any time exercised
any serious effect upon the theater. The praetors and aediles were not
to blame for what happened. They had placed good plays on the stage as
long as could be expected at the risk of offending the masses. Time and
again, relying upon their convictions as to the worth of a comedy, they
had staged plays that had failed; they were willing to pay very high
salaries, partly out of their own purses, to great actors like Aesopus
and Roscius who tried to revive the best plays and to win back to the
theater an intelligent group of listeners; they had set aside reserved
seats first for the senators and later for the knights in order to secure
good audiences for literary productions of a high order. Nevertheless the
drama declined. What the people demanded had in the end to be provided.
Individual criticism probably served its purpose to some extent,
but could not prevent the ebb. Men like Cicero ridiculed the cheap
entertainments and refused to attend them, they went out of their way to
encourage the better plays, and they did everything in public speeches,
in their essays, and in their social functions to show their appreciation
of serious actors like Roscius and Aesopus. Young poets like Asinius
Pollio and Varius Rufus filed away at poetic dramas that were published
for library shelves but never reached the stage. Critics like Horace
wrote to prove that what the populace greeted at every change as a new
and remarkable advance was nothing but a new step downward. And down it
went. The drama in some form remained a necessity for the populace and
they kept it at their level. The intelligent, who had in themselves,
their companions and their libraries their own means of entertainment,
deserted the theater which had grown unendurable to them.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Horace, _Epist._ I, 13: he mentions Pyrrha’s posture on the stage.
[2] Terence, _Hecyra_, 15-20.
[3] See Wessner, _Aemilius Asper_. E.g., the refusal of Charinus to win
his love by unworthy threats (317), and Pamphilus’ refusal to take credit
for a deed which he says a gentleman could not fail to perform (330). It
should also be noticed that in the _Perinthia_ Menander had a scene of
brutal slave-torturing which Terence took the liberty of eliminating.
[4] Cf. especially Leo, _Plaut. Forsch._ chap. IV; Legrand, _Daos_,
490 ff.; Michaut, _Plaute_, II, 116 ff.; Wilamowitz, _Menander, Das
Schiedsgericht_, 142 ff. A part of this chapter has appeared in the _Am.
Jour. Phil._, 1928, 309.
[5] One may add that if he was more explicit than one would think
necessary he was perhaps giving aid to the many strangers that came to
the theater in his day.
[6] For other instances see _Miles_, 238, 381, 767, 904, 1170; _Pseud._,
725; _Casina_, 683; _Most._, 662; _Menaechmi_, 831; _Trin._, 1137; cf.
Legrand, _Daos_, 533 ff.
[7] The _Merry Wives of Windsor_, though it contains no prologue, is
fully as explicit in the preparation of every incident—even the two
basket-scenes—as any play of Plautus. Indeed most of Shakespeare’s plays
give more attention to preparation than is customary on the stage today
even though his plots were usually familiar ones. The _Romeo and Juliet_
even has a prologue which goes so far as to disclose the outcome.
[8] The expository dialogue between the two slaves gives the immediate
situation so plainly that a _Heros_ would hardly have been employed for
the prologue except to reveal the secret hidden to the characters.
[9] In _Class. Phil._ 1916, 125 ff.; 1917, 405 ff.; 1918, 113 ff.; 1919,
108 ff.
[10] The _Epidicus_ probably once had a prologue (Wheeler, _Am. Jour.
Phil._ 1917, 264). One may suspect that the play in its present
form—which requires as patient reading as the _Hecyra_—was due to a
post-Terentian revision. The _Mercator_ has a prologue that does not
reveal much of the plot but in the second act the outcome is hinted at by
way of a dream. The play as we have it is a revision.
[11] According to Donatus, Menander’s play also contained the marriage,
but without objection on the part of Micio. Since in Terence Micio is
represented as resisting, the marriage must have been considered as
punishment.
[12] The _Hecyra_ according to Donatus was modeled upon a play of
Apollodorus, but it is now clear that that play was in turn modeled
upon Menander’s _Arbitrants_. That Terence suppressed the prologue of
Apollodorus is apparent from the comment of Donatus (who had a copy of
the Greek play at hand) on 1.58: _Hoc_ (the use of _protatica prosopa_)
_maluit Terentius quam per prologum narraret argumentum aut θεὸν ἀπὸ
μηχανῆς induceret loqui_. Since the list of characters and the beginning
of Menander’s _Arbitrants_ are lost, there may be some doubt regarding
his use of preparation in this play, but since the whole play operates
with “dramatic irony” and since Apollodorus had a prologue, it is more
than likely that he “prepared” his audience here as elsewhere. At any
rate Menander’s audience discover the owner of the finger ring in the
second act.
[13] I assume that Menander had revealed something about the escapades of
Chremes’ own son in the prologue, since Chremes’ pretenses at knowing how
to bring up children (152 ff.) were doubtless written in the first place
to amuse an audience that foresaw his failure.
[14] Leo, _Gesch. Lit._, 218, assumes that Caecilius had used the
prologue for personal criticism; Euanthius III. 2 says _deos argumentis
narrandis machinatos ceteri Latini ad instar Graecorum habent, Terentius
non habet_, which of course does not exclude an occasional use of the
personal prologue. After Terence, Afranius sometimes employs superhuman
prologues (Priapus, Sapientia, and Remeligo), but he seems also to have
used the prologue for personal statements in the manner of Terence (lines
25-8).