interesting, had it been better brought out; but it is a mere sketch. He
is a grave and serious character, hurried into extravagance by bad
example, evil counsel, and one fatal passion. A long soliloquy, in which
he compares human life to a house, reminds us, in its tone of feeling and
sentiment, of “All the world’s a stage.” The father seems a great deal too
foolish and credulous, and the slave must have relied much on his
weakness, when he ventured on such desperate expedients, and such palpable
lies. Slaves, it will already have been remarked, are principal characters
in many of the dramas of Plautus; and a curious subject of inquiry is
presented in their insolence, effrontery, triumphant roguery, and habitual
familiarity with their masters at one moment, while at the next they are
threatened with the lash or crucifixion. In Athens, however, where the
prototype of this character was found, the slave was treated by his master
with much more indulgence than the Spartan Helot, or any other slaves in
Greece. The masters themselves, who were introduced on the ancient stage,
were not in the first ranks of society; and the vices which required the
assistance of their slaves reduced them to an equality. Besides, an
Athenian or Roman master could hardly be displeased with the familiarity
of those who were under such complete subjection; and the striking
contrast of their manners and situation would render their sallies as
poignant as the spirited remarks of Roxalana in the seraglio of the
Sultan. The character, too, gave scope for those jests and scurrilities,
which seem to have been indispensable ingredients in a Roman comedy, but
which would be unsuitable in the mouths of more dignified persons. They
were, in fact, the buffoons of the piece, who avowed without scruple their
sensual inclinations and want of conscience; for not only their impudence,
but their frauds and deceptions, seem to have been highly relished by the
spectators. It is evident that both the Greeks and Romans took peculiar
pleasure in seeing a witty slave cheat a covetous master, and that the
ingenuity of the fraud was always thought sufficient atonement for its
knavery. Perhaps this unfortunate class of men derived so few advantages
from society, that they were considered as entitled, at least on the
stage, to break through its ties. The character of a saucy and impudent
slave had been already portrayed in the old Greek comedy. In the _Plutus_
of Aristophanes, Carion, the slave of Chremylus, is the most prominent
character, and is distinguished by freedom of remark and witty impudence.
To these attributes there was added, in the new comedy, a spirit of
roguery and intrigue: and in this form the character was almost
universally adopted by the Latin dramatists. The slaves of Plautus
correspond to the valets—the Crispins, and Merlins of the French theatre,
whose race commenced with Merlin, in Scarron’s _Marquis Ridicule_. They
were also introduced in Moliere’s earliest pieces, but not in his best;
and were in a great measure dropped by his successors, as, in fact, they
had ceased to be the spring of any important event or intrigue in the
world. Indeed, I agree with M. Schlegel, in doubting if they could ever
have been introduced as happily on the modern as the ancient stage. A
wretch who was born in servitude, who was abandoned for life to the
capricious will of a master, and was thus degraded below the dignity of
man, might excite laughter instead of indignation, though he did not
conform to the strictest precepts of honesty. He was placed in a state of
warfare with his oppressor, and cunning became his natural arms.
The French dramatist who has employed the character of the intriguing
valet to most advantage, is Regnard; to whom, among many other agreeable
pieces, we are indebted for a delightful imitation of the _Mostellaria_ of
Plautus, entitled, _Le Retour Imprevu, comedie en prose, et en une acte_.
In this play, the incidents of the _Mostellaria_ have been in general
adopted, though they have been somewhat transposed. We have the imposture
of Merlin, who corresponds with Plautus’s Tranio, as to the haunted house,
and his subterfuge when the usurer comes to claim the money which he had
lent. In place, however, of asking to see the new house, the father
proposes to deposit some merchandise in it. Merlin then persuades him,
that the lady to whom it formerly belonged, and who had not yet quitted
it, was unfortunately deprived of reason, and, having been in consequence
interdicted by her relations from the use of her property, the house had
been exposed to sale. At the same time, the artful valet finds an
opportunity of informing the real owner, that the old man had gone mad in
consequence of having lost all his merchandise at sea. Accordingly, when
they meet, neither of them pays the smallest attention to what each
considers the raving of the other. Instead of a courtezan, Regnard has
introduced a young lady, with whom Clitandre is in love; but he has given
her the manners rather of a courtezan, than a young lady. There is one
incident mentioned in the _Mostellaria_ which is omitted in the _Retour
Imprevu_, and of which even Plautus has not much availed himself, though
it might have been enlarged on, and improved to advantage: the old man
mentions, that he had met the person from whom he had bought the haunted
house, and that he had taxed him with the murder of his guest, whose
apparition still walked, but that he had stoutly denied the charge.
The _Fantasmi_ of Ercole Bentivoglio, an Italian comedy of the sixteenth
century, is formed on the same original as the _Retour Imprevu_. The
_Mostellaria_ has likewise suggested the plot of an old tragi-comedy by
Heywood, printed in 1633, and entitled _The English Traveller_. Fielding’s
_Intriguing Chambermaid_ is also derived from the _Mostellaria_, but
through the medium of Regnard’s comedy. Indeed, it may be considered as
almost a translation from the French; except that the author has most
absurdly assigned the part of the Latin Tranio, and French Merlin, to a
chambermaid, whom he calls Mrs Lettice, and has added a great number of
songs and _double entendres_.
It has been said, that the last act of Ben Johnson’s _Alchemist_, where
Face, in order to conceal the iniquities committed in his master’s house
during his absence, tries to persuade him, that it was shut up on account
of being visited by an apparition, has been suggested by the
_Mostellaria_(255); but, as there is no resemblance between the two plays
in other incidents, we cannot be assured that the _Mostellaria_ was at all
in the view of the great English dramatist.
_Persa_.—In this play, which belongs to the lowest order of comedy, the
characters are two slaves, a foot-boy of one of these slaves, a parasite,
a pander, and a courtezan, with her waiting-maid. The manners represented
are such as might be expected from this respectable group. The incidents
are few and slight, hinging almost entirely on a deceit practised against
the pander, who is persuaded to give a large sum for a free woman, whom
the slaves had dressed up as an Arabian captive, and whom he was obliged
to relinquish after having paid the money. The fable is chiefly defective
from the trick of the slaves being intended to serve their own purposes.
But such devices are interesting only when undertaken for the advantage of
higher characters; a comedy otherwise must degenerate into farce.
_Pœnulus_, (the Carthaginian,) is one of the longest, and, I think, on the
whole, the dullest of Plautus’ performances. It turns on the discovery of
a lost child, who had been stolen from her Carthaginian parents in
infancy, and had been carried to Greece. In none of those numerous plays
which turn on the recognition of lost children, has Plautus ever exhibited
an affecting interview, or even hit on an expression of natural
tenderness. The characters are either not brought on the stage at the
conclusion, and we are merely told by some slave or parasite that the
discovery had taken place: or, as in the instance of Hanno and his
daughter in the present drama, the parties most interested teaze and
torment each other with absurd questions, instead of giving way to any
species of emotion. It is a high example, however, of the noble and
generous spirit of the Romans, that Hanno, the Carthaginian introduced in
this play, which was represented in the course of the Punic wars, is more
amiable than almost any other character in Plautus. It is evident, from
his quibbles and obscene jests, that the Latin dramatist adapted his plays
to the taste of the vulgar; and if the picture of a villainous or
contemptible Carthaginian could have pleased the Roman public, as the Jew
of Malta gratified the prejudices of an English mob, Plautus would not
have hesitated to accommodate himself to such feelings, and his Hanno
would doubtless have appeared in those hateful colours in which the Jews,
or in that ridiculous light in which the French, have usually been
exhibited on the British stage.
The employment of different dialects, or idioms, which has been so great a
resource of the modern comic muse, particularly on the Italian stage, had
been early resorted to in Greece. Aristophanes, in one of his comedies,
introduced the jargon of a woman of Lacedæmon, where the Doric dialect was
spoken in its rudest form. Plautus, in a scene of the _Pœnulus_, has made
his Carthaginian speak in his native language; and as the Carthaginian
tongue was but little known in Greece, it may be presumed that this scene
was invented by Plautus himself.
Those remains of the Punic language which have been preserved, (though
probably a good deal corrupted,) are regarded as curious vestiges of
philological antiquity, and have afforded ample employment for the
critics, who have laboured to illustrate and restore them to the right
readings. Commentators have found in them traces of all the ancient
tongues, according to their own fancy, or some favourite system they had
adopted. Joseph Scaliger considered them as little removed from the purity
of original Hebrew(256); and Pareus, in his edition of Plautus, printed
them in Hebrew characters, as did Bochart, in his _Phaleg et Canaan_(257).
Others, from the resemblance of single letters, or syllables, have found
in different words the Chinese, Ethiopian, Persian, or Coptic
dialects(258). Plautus, it is well known, had considerable knowledge of
languages. Besides writing his own with the greatest purity, he was well
acquainted with Greek, Persian, and Punic. The editor of the Delphin
Plautus has a notable conjecture on this point: He supposes that in the
mill in which Plautus laboured, (as if it had been a large mill on the
modern construction,) there was a Carthaginian, a Greek, and a Persian
slave, from whom alternately he acquired a knowledge of these tongues in
the hours of relaxation from work!
_Pseudolus_—is one of those plays of Plautus which hinge on the
contrivance of a slave in behalf of his young master, who is represented
at the commencement of the play, as in despair at not having money
sufficient to redeem his mistress, just then sold by Ballio, a
slave-dealer, to a Macedonian captain for twenty _minæ_. Fifteen of these
had been paid, and the girl was to be delivered up to him as soon as he
sent the remaining five, along with an impression of a seal-ring, which
the captain had left behind as a pledge. Pseudolus, the slave, having
encountered the captain’s messenger, on his way to deliver a letter
containing the token and the balance of the stipulated price, personates
the pander’s servant, and is in consequence intrusted with the letter.
While the messenger is refreshing himself at a tavern, Pseudolus persuades
one of his fellow-slaves to assume the character of the captain’s
emissary, and to present the credentials (which Pseudolus places in his
possession) to the pander, who immediately acknowledges their
authenticity, and, without hesitation, delivers up the girl in return.
When the real messenger afterwards arrives, the slave-merchant treats him
as an impostor hired by Pseudolus.
Next to the slave, the principal character in this comedy is that of the
pander, which is sketched with the strong pencil of a master, and is an
admirable representation of that last stage of human depravity and
wretchedness, in which even appearances cease to be preserved with the
world, and there exists no longer any feeling or anxiety concerning the
opinion of others. Calidorus, the lover of the girl, upbraids him for his
breach of faith—
“Juravistine te illam nulli venditurum nisi mihi?
_Ballio._ Fateor. _Cal._ Nempe conceptis verbis. _Bal._ Etiam consultis
quoque.
_Cal._ Perjuravisti, sceleste. _Bal._ At argentum intro condidi:
Ego scelestus nunc argentum promere possum domo.”
M. Dacier, however, is of a different opinion with regard to the merit of
this character. He thinks that the _Pseudolus_, though mentioned by Cato
in Cicero’s Dialogue _De Senectute_, as a finished piece which greatly
delighted its author(259), and though called, by one of his commentators,
_Ocellus Fabularum Plauti_(260) was chiefly in Horace’s view when he
spoke, in his _Epistles_, of Plautus’ want of success in the characters of
a young passionate lover, a parsimonious father, and a cunning pimp,—
—— “Aspice, Plautus
Quo pacto partes tutetur amantis ephebi,
Ut patris attenti, lenonis ut insidiosi.”
These three characters all occur in this comedy; and Dacier maintains that
they are very poorly supported by the poet.—Calidorus is a young lover,
but his character (says the critic,) is so cold and lifeless, that he
hardly deserves the name. His father, Simo, corresponds as little to the
part of the _Patris attenti_; for he encourages the slave to deceive
himself, and promises him a recompense if he succeed in over-reaching the
slave-merchant, and placing in the hands of his son the girl on whom he
doated. Ballio, the slave-dealer, so far from sustaining the character
_lenonis insidiosi_, who should deceive every one, very foolishly becomes
the dupe of a lying valet(261).
The scene between Calidorus and the pander, from which some lines are
extracted above, and that by which it is preceded, where Ballio gives
directions to his slaves, seem to have suggested two scenes in Sir Richard
Steele’s comedy of the _Funeral_. The play has been more closely imitated
by Baptista Porta, the celebrated author of the Magia Naturalis in _La
Trappolaria_, one of the numerous plays with the composition of which he
amused his leisure, after the mysteries and chimeras of his chief work had
excited the suspicion of the court of Rome, and he was in consequence
prohibited from holding those assemblies of learned men, who repaired to
his house with their newly discovered secrets in medicine and other arts.
His play, which was first printed at Bergamo in 1596, is much more
complicated in its incidents than the Latin original. Trappola, the
Pseudolus of the piece, feigns himself, as in Plautus, to be the pander’s
slave, and persuades a parasite to act the part of the pander himself: By
this stratagem, the parasite receives from the captain’s servant the
stipulated money and tokens, but delivers to him in return his ugly wife
Gabrina, as the Beauty he was to receive; and there follows a comical
scene, produced by the consequent amazement and disappointment of the
captain. The parasite then personates the captain’s servant, and, by means
of the credentials of which he had possessed himself, obtains the damsel
Filesia, whom he carries to her lover. With this plot, chiefly taken from
Plautus, another series of incidents, invented by the Italian dramatist,
is closely connected. The father of the young lover, Arsenio, had left his
wife in Spain; and also another son, who had married there, and exactly
resembled his brother in personal appearance. Arsenio being ordered by his
father to sail from Naples, where the scene is laid, for Spain, in order
to convey home his relatives in that country, and being in despair at the
prospect of this separation from his mistress, the father is persuaded, by
a device of the cheat Trappola, that he had not proceeded on the voyage,
as his brother had already arrived. Availing himself of his resemblance,
Arsenio personates his Spanish brother, and brings his mistress as his
wife to his father’s house, where she remains protected, in spite of the
claims of the captain and pander, till the whole artifice is discovered by
the actual arrival of the old lady from Spain. Arsenio’s mistress being
then strictly questioned, proves to be a near connection of the family,
who had been carried off in childhood by corsairs, and she is now, with
the consent of all, united to her lover.
There is also a close imitation of the incidents of the _Pseudolus_ in
Moliere’s _Etourdi_, which turns on the stratagems of a valet to place a
girl in possession of his master Lelie. His first device, as already
mentioned, was suggested by the Epidicus(262); but this having failed, he
afterwards contrives to get into the service of his master’s rival,
Leander, who, having purchased the girl from the proprietor, had agreed to
send a ring as a token, at sight of which she was to be delivered up. The
valet receives the ring for this very purpose, carries it to the owner,
and by such means is just on the point of obtaining possession of the
girl, when his stratagem, as usual, is defeated by the _etourderie_ of his
master. This notion of the valet’s best-laid plans being always
counteracted, was probably suggested by the _Bacchides_ of Plautus, where
Mnesilochus repeatedly frustrates the well-contrived schemes of his slave
Chrysalus; though, perhaps through the medium of the _Inavertito_ of the
Italian dramatist, Nicolo Barbieri, printed in 1629, or Quinault’s _Amant
Indiscret_, which was acted four years before Moliere’s _Etourdi_, and is
founded on the same plan with that drama. In the particular incidents the
_Etourdi_ is compounded of the tricks of Plautus’ slaves; but Moliere has
shown little judgment in thus heaping them on each other in one piece.
Such events might occur once, but not six or seven times, to the same
person. In fact, the valet is more of an _Etourdi_ than his master, as he
never forewarns him of his plans; and we feel as we advance, that the play
could not be carried on without a previous concert among the characters to
connive at impossibilities, and to act in defiance of all common sense or
discretion.
_Rudens_.—This play, which is taken from a Greek comedy of Diphilus, has
been called _Rudens_ by Plautus, from the rope or cable whereby a
fisherman drags to shore a casket which chiefly contributes to the
solution of the fable. In the prologue, which is spoken by Arcturus, we
are informed of the circumstances which preceded the opening of the drama,
and the situation in which the characters were placed at its commencement.
Plautus has been frequently blamed by the critics for the fulness of his
preliminary expositions, as tending to destroy the surprise and interest
of the succeeding scenes. But I think he has been unjustly censured, even
with regard to those prologues, where, as in that of the _Pœnulus_, he has
anticipated the incidents, and revealed the issue of the plot. The
comedies of Plautus were intended entirely for exhibition on the public
stage, and not for perusal in the closet. The great mass of the Roman
people in his age was somewhat rude: They had not been long accustomed to
dramatic representations, and would have found it difficult to follow an
intricate plot without a previous exposition. This, indeed, was not
necessary in tragedies. The stories of Agamemnon and Œdipus, with other
mythical subjects, so frequently dramatized by Ennius and Livius
Andronicus, were sufficiently known; and, as Dryden has remarked, “the
people, as soon as they heard the name of Œdipus, knew as well as the poet
that he had killed his father by mistake, and committed incest with his
mother; that they were now to hear of a great plague, an oracle, and the
ghost of Laius(263).” It was quite different, however, in those new
inventions which formed the subjects of comedies, and in which the
incidents would have been lost or misunderstood without some introductory
explanation. The attention necessary to unravel a plot prevents us from
remarking the beauties of sentiment or poetry, and draws off our attention
from humour or character, the chief objects of legitimate comedy. We often
read a new play, or one with which we are not acquainted, before going to
see it acted. Surprise, which is everything in romance, is the least part
of the drama. Our horror at the midnight murders of Macbeth, and our
laughter at the falsehoods and facetiousness of Falstaff, are not
diminished, but increased, by knowing the issue of the crimes of the one,
and the genial festivity of the other. In fact, the sympathy and pleasure
so often derived from our knowledge outweighs the gratification of
surprise. The Athenians were well aware that Jocasta, in the celebrated
drama of Sophocles, was the mother of Œdipus; but the knowledge of this
fact, so far from abating the concern of the spectators, as Dryden
supposes(264), must have greatly contributed to increase the horror and
interest excited by the representation of that amazing tragedy. The
celebrated scene of _Iphigenia in Tauris_, between Electra and Orestes,
the masterpiece of poetic art and tragic pathos, would lose half its
effect if we were not aware that Orestes was the brother of Electra, and
if this were reserved as a discovery to surprise the spectators. Indeed,
so convinced of all this were the Greek dramatists, that, in many of their
plays, as the _Hecuba_ and _Hippolytus_ of Euripides, the issue of the
drama is announced at its commencement.
But, be this as it may, the prologue itself, which is prefixed to the
_Rudens_, is eminently beautiful. Arcturus descends as a star from heaven,
and opens the piece, somewhat in the manner of the Angel who usually
delivers the prologue in the ancient Italian mysteries—of the Mercury who
frequently recites it in the early secular dramas, and the Attendant
Spirit in the Masque of Comus, who, by way of prologue, declares his
office, and the mission which called him to earth. In a manner more
consistent with oriental than with either Greek or Roman mythology,
Arcturus represents himself as mingling with mankind during day, in order
to observe their actions, and as presenting a record of their good and
evil deeds to Jupiter, whom the wicked in vain attempt to appease by
sacrifice—
“Atque hoc scelesti in animum inducunt suum,
Jovem se placare posse donis, hostiis:
Et operam et sumptum perdunt.” ——