STR. Strike me if I stole anything of yours, (_Aside to audience_) and if
I don't wish I'd made off with it.
EUC. Come now, shake out your cloak.
STR. (_Doing so._) As you please.
EUC. (_Stooping to see if anything falls out._) Haven't got it under your
shirt? (_Pounces upon him and ransacks clothing._)
STR. (_Resignedly._) Search me, if you like;" and so on with "Give it
back," What is it? "Put out your right hand," etc., etc.
MoliA"re again imitated almost slavishly (_L'Avare_, V. 3). Longwinded as
the thing is, it is clear that the liveliness of the action not only
relieves it, but could make it immensely amusing. At least it is superior
to the average vaudeville skit of the present day. It must not be
forgotten too that, as Plautus was in close touch with his players, he
could have done much of the stage-directing himself and might even have
worked up some parts to fit the peculiar talents of certain actors, as is
regularly done in the modern "tailormade drama."
There are numbers of scenes of the sort quoted above, where the apparent
monotony and verbal padding could be converted into coin for laughter by
the clever comedian. _Amph._ 551-632 could be worked up poco a poco
crescendo e animato; in _Poen._ 504 ff., Agorastocles and the _Advocati_
bandy extensive rhetoric; in _Trin._ 276 ff., the action is suspended
while Philto proves himself Polonius' ancestor in his long-winded
sermonizing to Lysiteles and his insistent _laudatio temporis acti_; in
_St._ 326 ff., as Pinacium, the _servus currens_, finally succeeds in
"arriving" out of breath (he has been running since 274), bursting with
the vast importance of his news, he postpones the delivery of his tidings
till 371 while he indulges in irrelevant badinage. This is pure
buffoonery. And we can instance scene upon scene where the self-evident
padding can either furnish an excuse for agile histrionism, or become
merely tiresome in its iteration[161]. The danger of the latter was even
recognized by our poet, when, at the end of much word-fencing, Acanthio
asks Charinus if his desire to talk quietly is prompted by fear of waking
"the sleeping spectators" (_Mer._ 160). This was probably no exaggeration.
When the padding takes the form of mutual "spoofing," the scene assumes an
uncanny likeness to the usual lines of a modern "high-class vaudeville
duo." Note Leonida and Libanus, the merry slaves of the _As._ in 297 ff.,
Toxilus and Sagaristio in the _Per._, Milphio and Syncerastus in the
_Poen._ (esp. 851 ff.), Pseudolus and Simia in _Ps._ 905 ff., Trachalio
and Gripus in _Rud._ 938 ff., Stichus and Sagarinus in the final scene of
the _St._, and in _Ps._ 1167 ff. Harpax is unmercifully "chaffed" by Simo
and Ballio. Or, in view of the surrounding drama, we might better compare
these roysterers to the "team" of low comedians often grafted on a musical
comedy, where their antics effectually prevent the tenuous plot from
becoming vulgarly prominent.