Horace, his judgment of Chœrillus defended against Joseph Scaliger.
{149c} And of Laberius against Julius. {149d}
But chiefly his opinion of Plautus {149e} vindicated against many that
are offended, and say it is a hard censure upon the parent of all conceit
and sharpness. And they wish it had not fallen from so great a master
and censor in the art, whose bondmen knew better how to judge of Plautus
than any that dare patronise the family of learning in this age; who
could not be ignorant of the judgment of the times in which he lived,
when poetry and the Latin language were at the height; especially being a
man so conversant and inwardly familiar with the censures of great men
that did discourse of these things daily amongst themselves. Again, a
man so gracious and in high favour with the Emperor, as Augustus often
called him his witty manling (for the littleness of his stature), and, if
we may trust antiquity, had designed him for a secretary of estate, and
invited him to the palace, which he modestly prayed off and refused.
_Terence_.—_Menander_. Horace did so highly esteem Terence’s comedies,
as he ascribes the art in comedy to him alone among the Latins, and joins
him with Menander.
Now, let us see what may be said for either, to defend Horace’s judgment
to posterity and not wholly to condemn Plautus.
_The parts of a comedy and tragedy_.—The parts of a comedy are the same
with a tragedy, and the end is partly the same, for they both delight and
teach; the comics are called διδάσκαλοι, of the Greeks no less than the
tragics.
_Aristotle_.—_Plato_.—_Homer_.—Nor is the moving of laughter always the
end of comedy; that is rather a fowling for the people’s delight, or
their fooling. For, as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of laughter is
a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude that depraves some part of a man’s
nature without a disease. As a wry face without pain moves laughter, or
a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady’s habit and using
her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations which made the
ancient philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man. And
this induced Plato to esteem of Homer as a sacrilegious person, because
he presented the gods sometimes laughing. As also it is divinely said of
Aristotle, that to seen ridiculous is a part of dishonesty, and foolish.
_The wit of the old comedy_.—So that what either in the words or sense of
an author, or in the language or actions of men, is awry or depraved does
strangely stir mean affections, and provoke for the most part to
laughter. And therefore it was clear that all insolent and obscene
speeches, jests upon the best men, injuries to particular persons,
perverse and sinister sayings (and the rather unexpected) in the old
comedy did move laughter, especially where it did imitate any dishonesty,
and scurrility came forth in the place of wit, which, who understands the
nature and genius of laughter cannot but perfectly know.
_Aristophanes_.—_Plautus_.—Of which Aristophanes affords an ample
harvest, having not only outgone Plautus or any other in that kind, but
expressed all the moods and figures of what is ridiculous oddly. In
short, as vinegar is not accounted good until the wine be corrupted, so
jests that are true and natural seldom raise laughter with the beast the
multitude. They love nothing that is right and proper. The farther it
runs from reason or possibility with them the better it is.
_Socrates_.—_Theatrical wit_.—What could have made them laugh, like to
see Socrates presented, that example of all good life, honesty, and
virtue, to have him hoisted up with a pulley, and there play the
philosopher in a basket; measure how many foot a flea could skip
geometrically, by a just scale, and edify the people from the engine.
This was theatrical wit, right stage jesting, and relishing a playhouse,
invented for scorn and laughter; whereas, if it had savoured of equity,
truth, perspicuity, and candour, to have tasten a wise or a learned
palate,—spit it out presently! this is bitter and profitable: this
instructs and would inform us: what need we know any thing, that are
nobly born, more than a horse-race, or a hunting-match, our day to break
with citizens, and such innate mysteries?
_The cart_.—This is truly leaping from the stage to the tumbril again,
reducing all wit to the original dung-cart.
Of the magnitude and compass of any fable, epic or dramatic.
_What the measure of a fable is_.—_The fable or plot of a poem
defined_.—_The epic fable_, _differing from the dramatic_.—To the
resolving of this question we must first agree in the definition of the
fable. The fable is called the imitation of one entire and perfect
action, whose parts are so joined and knit together, as nothing in the
structure can be changed, or taken away, without impairing or troubling
the whole, of which there is a proportionable magnitude in the members.
As for example: if a man would build a house, he would first appoint a
place to build it in, which he would define within certain bounds; so in
the constitution of a poem, the action is aimed at by the poet, which
answers place in a building, and that action hath his largeness, compass,
and proportion. But as a court or king’s palace requires other
dimensions than a private house, so the epic asks a magnitude from other
poems, since what is place in the one is action in the other; the
difference is an space. So that by this definition we conclude the fable
to be the imitation of one perfect and entire action, as one perfect and
entire place is required to a building. By perfect, we understand that
to which nothing is wanting, as place to the building that is raised, and
action to the fable that is formed. It is perfect, perhaps not for a
court or king’s palace, which requires a greater ground, but for the
structure he would raise; so the space of the action may not prove large
enough for the epic fable, yet be perfect for the dramatic, and whole.
_What we understand by whole_.—Whole we call that, and perfect, which
hath a beginning, a midst, and an end. So the place of any building may
be whole and entire for that work, though too little for a palace. As to
a tragedy or a comedy, the action may be convenient and perfect that
would not fit an epic poem in magnitude. So a lion is a perfect creature
in himself, though it be less than that of a buffalo or a rhinocerote.
They differ but in specie: either in the kind is absolute; both have
their parts, and either the whole. Therefore, as in every body so in
every action, which is the subject of a just work, there is required a
certain proportionable greatness, neither too vast nor too minute. For
that which happens to the eyes when we behold a body, the same happens to
the memory when we contemplate an action. I look upon a monstrous giant,
as Tityus, whose body covered nine acres of land, and mine eye sticks
upon every part; the whole that consists of those parts will never be
taken in at one entire view. So in a fable, if the action be too great,
we can never comprehend the whole together in our imagination. Again, if
it be too little, there ariseth no pleasure out of the object; it affords
the view no stay; it is beheld, and vanisheth at once. As if we should
look upon an ant or pismire, the parts fly the sight, and the whole
considered is almost nothing. The same happens in action, which is the
object of memory, as the body is of sight. Too vast oppresseth the eyes,
and exceeds the memory; too little scarce admits either.
_What is the utmost bounds of a fable_.—Now in every action it behoves
the poet to know which is his utmost bound, how far with fitness and a
necessary proportion he may produce and determine it; that is, till
either good fortune change into the worse, or the worse into the better.
For as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no more can the
action, either in comedy or tragedy, without his fit bounds: and every
bound, for the nature of the subject, is esteemed the best that is
largest, till it can increase no more; so it behoves the action in
tragedy or comedy to be let grow till the necessity ask a conclusion;
wherein two things are to be considered: first, that it exceed not the
compass of one day; next, that there be place left for digression and
art. For the episodes and digressions in a fable are the same that
household stuff and other furniture are in a house. And so far from the
measure and extent of a fable dramatic.
_What by one and entire_.—Now that it should be one and entire. One is
considerable two ways; either as it is only separate, and by itself, or
as being composed of many parts, it begins to be one as those parts grow
or are wrought together. That it should be one the first away alone, and
by itself, no man that hath tasted letters ever would say, especially
having required before a just magnitude and equal proportion of the parts
in themselves. Neither of which can possibly be, if the action be single
and separate, not composed of parts, which laid together in themselves,
with an equal and fitting proportion, tend to the same end; which thing
out of antiquity itself hath deceived many, and more this day it doth
deceive.
_Hercules_.—_Theseus_.—_Achilles_.—_Ulysses_.—_Homer and
Virgil_.—_Æneas_.—_Venus_.—So many there be of old that have thought the
action of one man to be one, as of Hercules, Theseus, Achilles, Ulysses,
and other heroes; which is both foolish and false, since by one and the
same person many things may be severally done which cannot fitly be
referred or joined to the same end: which not only the excellent tragic
poets, but the best masters of the epic, Homer and Virgil, saw. For
though the argument of an epic poem be far more diffused and poured out
than that of tragedy, yet Virgil, writing of Æneas, hath pretermitted
many things. He neither tells how he was born, how brought up, how he
fought with Achilles, how he was snatched out of the battle by Venus; but
that one thing, how he came into Italy, he prosecutes in twelve books.
The rest of his journey, his error by sea, the sack of Troy, are put not
as the argument of the work, but episodes of the argument. So Homer laid
by many things of Ulysses, and handled no more than he saw tended to one
and the same end.
_Theseus_.—_Hercules_.—_Juvenal_.—_Codrus_.—_Sophocles_.—_Ajax_.—
_Ulysses_.—Contrary to which, and foolishly, those poets did, whom the
philosopher taxeth, of whom one gathered all the actions of Theseus,
another put all the labours of Hercules in one work. So did he whom
Juvenal mentions in the beginning, “hoarse Codrus,” that recited a volume
compiled, which he called his Theseide, not yet finished, to the great
trouble both of his hearers and himself; amongst which there were many
parts had no coherence nor kindred one with another, so far they were
from being one action, one fable. For as a house, consisting of divers
materials, becomes one structure and one dwelling, so an action, composed
of divers parts, may become one fable, epic or dramatic. For example, in
a tragedy, look upon Sophocles, his Ajax: Ajax, deprived of Achilles’
armour, which he hoped from the suffrage of the Greeks, disdains; and,
growing impatient of the injury, rageth, and runs mad. In that humour he
doth many senseless things, and at last falls upon the Grecian flock and
kills a great ram for Ulysses: returning to his senses, he grows ashamed
of the scorn, and kills himself; and is by the chiefs of the Greeks
forbidden burial. These things agree and hang together, not as they were
done, but as seeming to be done, which made the action whole, entire, and
absolute.
_The conclusion concerning the whole_, _and the parts_.—_Which are
episodes_.—_Ajax and Hector_.—_Homer_.—For the whole, as it consisteth of
parts, so without all the parts it is not the whole; and to make it
absolute is required not only the parts, but such parts as are true. For
a part of the whole was true; which, if you take away, you either change
the whole or it is not the whole. For if it be such a part, as, being
present or absent, nothing concerns the whole, it cannot be called a part
of the whole; and such are the episodes, of which hereafter. For the
present here is one example: the single combat of Ajax with Hector, as it
is at large described in Homer, nothing belongs to this Ajax of
Sophocles.
You admire no poems but such as run like a brewer’s cart upon the stones,
hobbling:—
“Et, quæ per salebras, altaque saxa cadunt,
Accius et quidquid Pacuviusque vomunt.
Attonitusque legis terraï, frugiferaï.” {160a}