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 pass his life in affluence, spent it in the exercise of an
honourable profession, and was the chosen familiar friend of Cato, Scipio
Africanus, Fulvius Nobilior, and Lælius, 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 circumstance 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 multitude. He must stoop to men—be the mover of human
hearts—and triumph by the living and hourly passions 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 multitude, 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 coarseness 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, coarse 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 constitution 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 assemblies 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 coarse ridicule at all times, till
the humour passed from the rostrum, or forum, to the theatre, where the
amusement 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 Bacchanalia 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 _Fabulæ Atellanæ_.
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 classed 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 prostituted his talents to the lowest gratifications of the
multitude. 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’eût point fait souvent grimacer ses figures,
Quitte, pour le bouffon, l’agreable et le fin,
Et, sans honte, a Terence allié 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 amusement:
“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 passages 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 Massinger
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 Cæcilius, Afranius, and even Terence, were first
represented.
CÆCILIUS,
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 principal
actor, or rather manager of the theatre, that, when he first brought out
the plays of Cæcilius, 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 Cæcilius, 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 Cæcilius—
“Vincere Cæcilius 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, “Cæcilius palmam poscit; in ethesi Terentius.” By
_gravitas_, therefore, as applied to Cæcilius, 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 Cæcilius facile moverunt.” Velleius Paterculus joins him with
Terence and Afranius, whom he reckons the most excellent comic writers of
Rome—“Dulcesque Latini leporis facetiæ per Cæcilium, Terentiumque, et
Afranium, sub pari ætate, nituerunt(288).”
A great many of the plays of Cæcilius 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 Cæcilius, with the corresponding scene in
Menander, and pronounces 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 _Togatæ_,
was an imitator of the manner of Menander—
“Dicitur Afranî 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 titles 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 entitled _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.”
The following lines from the _Vopiscum_ have also been frequently quoted:
“Si possent homines delinimentis capi,
Omnes haberent nunc amatores anus.
Ætas, et corpus tenerum, et morigeratio,
Hæc sunt venena formosarum mulierum(293).”
LUSCIUS LAVINIUS,
also a follower of Menander, was the contemporary and enemy of Terence,
who, in his prologues, has satirized his injudicious translations from the
Greek—
“Qui bene, vertendo et eas describendo male,
Ex Græcis bonis, Latinas fecit non bonas(294).”
In particular, we learn from the prologue to the _Phormio_, that he was
fond of bringing on the stage frantic youths, committing all those
excesses of folly and distraction which are supposed to be produced by
violent love. Donatus has afforded us an account of the plot of his
_Phasma_, which was taken from Menander. A lady, who, before marriage, had
a daughter, the fruit of a secret amour with a person now living in a
house adjacent to her husband’s, made an opening in the wall of her own
dwelling, in order to communicate with that in which her former paramour
and daughter resided. That this entrance might appear a consecrated spot
to her husband’s family, she decked it with garlands, and shaded it with
branches of trees. To this passage she daily repaired as if to pay her
devotions, but in fact, to procure interviews with her illegitimate
daughter. Her husband also had, by a former wife, a son, who dwelt in his
father’s house, and who, having one day accidentally peeped through the
aperture, beheld the girl; and, as she was possessed of almost
supernatural beauty, he was struck with awe, as at the sight of a Spirit
or divinity, whence the play received the name of _Phasma_. The young man,
discovering at length that she is a mortal, conceives for her a violent
passion, and is finally united to her, with the consent of his father, and
to the great satisfaction of the mother. There is another play of
Menander, which has also been closely imitated by Luscius Lavinius.
Plautus, we have seen, borrowed his _Trinummus_ from the _Thesaurus_ of
Philemon. But Menander also wrote a _Thesaurus_, which has been copied by
Lavinius. An old man, by his last will, had commanded, that, ten years
after his death, his son should carry libations to the monument under
which he was to be interred. The youth, having squandered his fortune,
sold the ground on which this monument stood to an old miser. At the end
of ten years, the prodigal sent a servant to the tomb with due offerings,
according to the injunctions of his deceased father. The servant applied
to the new proprietor to assist him in opening the monument, in which they
discovered a hoard of gold. The miserly owner of the soil seized the
treasure, and retained it on pretence of having deposited it there for
safety during a period of public commotion. It is claimed, however, by the
young man, who goes to law with him; and the plot of the comedy chiefly
consists in the progress of the suit(295)—the dramatic management of which
has been ridiculed by Terence, in the prologue to the _Eunuchus_, since,
contrary to the custom and rules of all courts of justice, the author had
introduced the defendant pleading his title to the treasure before the
plaintiff had explained his pretensions, and entered on the grounds of his
demand. Part of the old Scotch ballad, The Heir of Linne, has a curious
resemblance to the plot of this play of Luscius Lavinius.
Turpilius, Trabea, and Attilius, were the names of comic writers who lived
towards the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century, from
the building of Rome. Of these, and other contemporary dramatists, it
would now be difficult to say more than that their works have perished,
and to repeat a few scattered incidental criticisms delivered by Varro or
Cicero. To them probably may be attributed the _Baccharia_, _Cæcus_,
_Cornicularia_, _Parasitus_, and innumerable other comedies, of which the
names have been preserved by grammarians. Of such works, once the
favourites of the Roman stage, few memorials survive, and these only to be
found separate and imperfect in the quotations of scholiasts. Sometimes
from a single play numerous passages have been preserved; but they are so
detached, that they neither give us any insight into the fable to which
they appertain, nor enable us to pronounce on the excellence of the
dramatic characters. In general, they comprise so small a portion of
uninterrupted dialogue, that we can scarcely form a judgment even of the
style and manner of the poet, or of the beauty of his versification. All
that is now valuable in these fragments is a few brief moral maxims, and
some examples of that _vis comica_, which consists in an ingenious and
forcible turn of expression in the original language.
It is not difficult to account for the vast number of dramatic productions
which we thus see were brought forward at Rome in the early ages of the
Republic. There are two ways in which literature may be supported,—By the
patronage of distinguished individuals, as it was in the time of Mæcenas
and the age of Lorenzo de Medici; or, By the encouragement of a great
literary public, as it is now rewarded in modern Europe. But, in Rome,
literature as yet had not obtained the protection of an emperor or a
favourite minister; and previous to the invention of printing, which alone
could give extensive circulation to his productions, a poet could hardly
gain a livelihood by any means, except by supplying popular entertainments
for the stage. These were always liberally paid for by the Ædiles, or
other directors of the public amusements. To this species of composition,
accordingly, the poet directed his almost undivided attention; and a
prodigious facility was afforded to his exertions by the inexhaustible
dramatic stores which he found prepared for him in Greece.
TRABEA.
The plays of Quintus Trabea, supposed to belong chiefly to the class
called _Togatæ_, are frequently cited by the grammarians, and are
mentioned with approbation by Cicero. He in particular commends the lines
where this poet so agreeably describes the credulity and overweening
satisfaction of a lover—
“Tantâ lætitiâ auctus sum ut mihi non constem:
Nunc demum mihi animus ardet.
Lena, delinita argento, nutum observabit meum—
Quid velim quid studeam: adveniens digito impellam januam:
Fores patebunt—de improviso Chrysis, ubi me aspexit,
Alacris obviam mihi veniet, complexum exoptans meum;
Mihi se dedet.—Fortunam ipsam anteibo fortunis meis(296).”
The name of Trabea was made use of in a well known deception practised on
Joseph Scaliger by Muretus. Scaliger piqued himself on his faculty of
distinguishing the characteristic styles of ancient writers. In order to
entrap him, Muretus showed him some verses, pretending that he had
received them from Germany, where they had been transcribed from an
ancient MS. attributed to Q. Trabea—
“Here, si querelis, ejulatu, fletibus,
Medicina fieret miseriis mortalium,
Auro parandæ lachrymæ contra forent:
Nunc hæc ad minuenda mala non magis valent
Quam Nænia præficæ ad excitandos mortuos:
Res turbidæ consilium, non fletum, expetunt(297).”