C. LATIN COMEDY

C. LATIN COMEDY

The plays of Plautus and Terence keep the dramaturgy known as the New Comedy,[24] the comedy of Menander. Its figures, alike in Greek and in Latin, are types. Such individualizing as may be discerned, in the _Menæchmi_ for instance, or the _Self-tormentor_, stands out as exceptional. Comedy, perhaps, tends more than tragedy to the typical. At any rate, Latin comedy has a set of _personæ_ quite fixed:[25] two fathers, two sons in love and in debt, two daughters of romance or of pleasure, and two slaves to stir the intrigue. There might be a matron, a slave-trader, and a braggart soldier; and there would be pretty surely a parasite.

Stock figures involve conventionality also in plot. One of them may have a double,[26] and the plot may consist largely of mistaking one for the other; or the long-lost daughter, as in the _declamationes_ and the Greek romances, may have been kidnapped by pirates. Typical is the plot of Terence’s _Phormio_:

One Chremes had a brother Demipho, who wishing for some cause abroad to go, had left his son young Antipho at home at Athens, while it pleased him thus to roam. This Chremes had a wife and daughter too in Lemnos domiciled, that no one knew; another one at Athens, and an heir that desperately loved a harper fair. From Lemnos came the mother with the maid to Athens, and there died. The daughter paid the last sad rites (now Chremes was away). And so it came about that on that day young Antipho the orphan child espied, fell deep in love and took her for his bride. (’twas through a parasite ’twas brought about). The brothers coming home with rage broke out, gave thirty minæ to the parasite to take her off and marry her outright. With this they buy the girl that Phædria prized; the other keeps his bride now recognized.[27]

In essentials this is the plot of any Latin comedy. That the Greek originals of the New Comedy were less crystallized is suggested by larger fragments recovered recently; and that Menander was a creator of plots may be inferred from the saying reported by Plutarch: “I have made my comedy; for the plan is arranged, and I have only to write verses for it.”[28] Even with so few situations as in Latin comedy there is room for variety of handling. Early commentators distinguish the _modus motorius_,[29] the kinetic mode, from the _statarius_, or static, and find that Terence, except in the _Phormio_, tends to the latter. But even the movement of Plautus is rather bustle and go than onward progress. Dramatic movement will hardly be compelling where motivation is so much from circumstances and so little from character. _Modus motorius_ seems to imply rather liveliness than sequence. To the large, miscellaneous, and turbulent Roman audience, it has been plausibly suggested, there would have been little appeal in cogency of plot.

A certain dulness in the audience is suggested by the fact that Terence was reproached for combining two Greek plots in one Latin play. He protests, naturally, that this is his right; and the _Phormio_ shows his ability to weave an intrigue clearly and attractively. The dramatic lack mistakenly ascribed to his stories is rather of salience, especially of visibly significant action before our eyes. That this can vivify even conventional characters in a conventional plot is the chief dramatic message of Plautus. He trusts the intelligence of his audience so little as to make his prologue an oral program, a _catalogue raisonné_, explicit to the last degree.[30] With Terence he resorts to the aside, the soliloquy, and the convention of people on the stage together who do not see each other—all these when they could be obviated by a little dramatic ingenuity. Where Plautus spends his ingenuity is on lively realism of detail, on abundance of stage “business.” He holds a scene, turning and returning a situation, until he has used its whole value. Though this is sometimes tiresome for reading, it shows good theatrical sense of the actual audience. He may have learned it from acting. Nothing is more instructive to playwrights than this filling of a simple outline. The habit is almost the opposite of the compression of Greek tragedy, and the New Comedy is doubtless inferior to tragedy in every point of plot; but none the less it vindicates clearly the value and the Plautine method of imaginative amplification.

FOOT-NOTES:

[1] All the larger histories of Greek literature appraise Greek tragedy, trace its history, and cite monographs for special study. The study of Greek tragedy as drama should begin with the plays themselves. These should be read—and with happily increasing frequency they may even be seen—before reading further about them; for they are now available not only in many editions, but also in many translations. Translation, though it must fall short or go wide of the original diction, conveys the larger dramatic movement, the characteristic dramaturgy; and Sir Gilbert Murray’s translation of Aristotle’s main example, _Œdipus Rex_, seeks especially the dramatic values. Very instructive comparisons may be made by reading all eight tragedies presenting the story of Orestes and his house, the “Oresteia”: the _Agamemnon_, _Choephoræ_, and _Eumenides_ of Æschylus, the only extant trilogy; the _Electra_ of Sophocles; and the _Orestes_, _Electra_, _Iphigenia in Aulis_, and _Iphigenia in Tauris_ of Euripides. Beside the _Œdipus Rex_ of Sophocles most critics would place his _Antigone_; and beside the _Medea_, the most popular play of Euripides, his _Alcestis_ and his _Trojan Women_. But it is no great task to read all extant Greek tragedies.

The general character of Greek dramaturgy and its historical place are outlined at once concisely and suggestively by Brander Matthews in his _Development of the Drama_ (New York, 1903), chapter ii, to which may be added chapters iii, v, viii, ix, and xiii of his _Study of the Drama_ (New York, 1910). T. D. Goodell’s _Athenian Tragedy_ (New Haven, 1920) is admirable. Gilbert Murray’s _Euripides and His Age_ (London and New York, 1913) discusses Greek dramaturgy generally in chapters iii, viii, and ix. More inclusive works for English readers are A. E. Haigh’s _The Attic Theatre_, 3d edition revised by A. W. Pickard-Cambridge (Oxford, 1907), and R. C. Flickinger’s _The Greek Theatre and Its Drama_ (Chicago, 1918).

These few books are selected as specifically informing and suggestive for dramaturgy. A longer selective list will be found in L. VanHook’s _Greek Life and Thought_ (New York, 1923), pages 310-312. A comprehensive bibliography, so many are the historical significances of Greek tragedy, would fill a volume.

[2] This paragraph and the following are adapted from the author’s _Writing and Speaking_, pages 412-415.

[3] “The words are so composed that their full effect can be appreciated only through the clear and rhythmical enunciation of an actor who relies mainly on his voice.” J. T. Sheppard, _The Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles_ translated and explained, Cambridge University Press, 1920, page ix.

[4] See pages 126, 127 above on the distinction made by pseudo-Longinus (xi-xii) between poetry and oratory.

[5] Parts of this paragraph and the following are taken from the author’s _A Note on the History Play_, in _Shakesperian Studies_, Columbia University Press, 1916.

[6] This has nowhere been better expounded than in the ninth chapter of Gilbert Murray’s _Euripides and His Age_, London and New York (Home University Library), 1913.

[7] _Poetic_, 1447 a. See above, pages 140, 143.

[8] _Poetic_, 1453 a. See above, pages 135, 144, 155.

[9] For instance, Chaucer’s Monk says in his prologue:

Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie, As olde bokes maken us memorie, Of him that stood in greet prosperitee And is yfallen out of heigh degree Into miserie, and endeth wretchedly.

_Canterbury Tales_, B. 3163.

[10] _De Nugis Curialium_, IV. xi. Map’s collection contains several other forms of the same story or of related stories.

[11] Brunetière’s point (_Annales du Théâtre_, 1893) is well interpreted by Brander Matthews, _The Development of the Drama_, page 20, and again in _A Study of the Drama_, chapter v.

[12] As to this see Gilbert Murray, _Euripides and His Age_, page 205.

[13] See above, page 163.

[14] E. S. Shuckburgh’s edition of the _Antigone_, Cambridge University Press, 1908, page xvii.

[15] Not that there were never lapses of time or shifts of place (see Matthews, _A Study of the Drama_, Chapter xiii, and Goodell, page 82), but that Greek tragedies move habitually without time-break and in a single stage-setting.

[16] Murray, _op. cit._, page 212.

[17] See above, pages 147, 149, 150, 161.

[18] The plays ascribed to L. Annæus Seneca (distinguished as “the younger” or “the philosopher,” circ. 4 B. C.-65 A. D.) are _Œdipus_, _Phœnissæ_, _Medea_, _Hercules Furens_, _Hippolytus_ (or _Phædra_), _Hercules Œtæus_, _Thyestes_, _Troades_, _Agamemnon_. Their authorship is discussed by E. C. Chickering in _An introduction to Octavia Prætexta_, New York, 1910 (Columbia dissertation), which also contains a brief account of Roman tragedy, reviews the question of the stage production of Seneca, and discusses his rank as tragedian. Ella I. Harris’s _Two tragedies of Seneca, Medea and the Daughters of Troy, rendered into English verse_, Boston, 1898 (all ten, New York, 1904), summarizes Senecan influence on English drama. See further J. W. Cunliffe’s _The influence of Seneca on Elizabethan tragedy_, New York, 1893. All the Senecan tragedies are included in _The tragedies of Seneca translated into English verse, to which have been appended comparative analyses of the corresponding Greek and Roman plays_ ... by F. J. Miller, introduced by an essay on the influence of the tragedies of Seneca upon early English drama by J. M. Manly, Chicago, 1907. Miller’s translation is published also in the Loeb Classical Library.

[19] Chickering suggests (page 45) a resemblance to grand opera.

[20] It is reviewed by Chickering.

[21] “Ce sont des exercices de déclamation, des recueils factices de morceaux de bravoure écrits pour la lecture.” G. Michaud, _Le génie latin_, Paris, 1900, page 116.

[22] See above, pages 71-2 and foot-note 8. “Quant aux caractères c’est du stoicisme découpé en personnages.” E. Nageotte, _Histoire de la littérature latine_, page 469.

[23] Seneca “the elder,” or the rhetorician, in his collection of _Controversiæ_, is the chief source of our knowledge of _declamatio_. See Chapter IV. II.

[24] See Legrand, P. E., _Tableau de la comédie grecque pendant la période dite nouvelle_—κωμῳδία νέα; translated as _The New Greek Comedy_ by James Loeb, with introduction by John Williams White, London and New York, 1917. An earlier study quoted below is Lallier, R., _La comédie nouvelle, introduction à l’étude du théâtre de Térence_ (leçon d’ouverture), Toulouse, 1876.

Recent English translations of Plautus are: by Paul Nixon in the Loeb Classical Library (2 volumes issued); by E. H. Sugden of _Amphitruo_, _Asinaria_, _Aulularia_, _Bacchides_, _Captivi_, London, 1893; by H. O. Sibley and F. Smalley of _Trinummus_, Syracuse, N. Y., 1895; by B. H. Clark of _Menæchmi_, New York, 1915. W. H. D. Rouse has reprinted William Warner’s Elizabethan translation of _Menæchmi_ with the Latin text for the study of Shakspere’s _Comedy of Errors_, London, 1912.

A second edition of F. Leo’s _Plautinische Forschungen zur Kritik und Geschichte der Komödie_ appeared in Berlin, 1912. More recent studies are: Brasse, M., _Quatenus in fabulis Plautinis et loci et temporis unitatibus species veritatis neglegatur_ ... Greifswald, 1914 (Breslau thesis); Schild, Erich, _Die dramaturgische Rolle der Sklaven bei Plautus und Terenz_, Basel (thesis), 1917; Blancké, W. W., _The dramatic values in Plautus_, Geneva, N. Y., 1918 (Pennsylvania thesis); Cole, Mrs. H. E., _Deception in Plautus_, a study in the technique of Roman comedy, with bibliography, Boston, 1920 (Bryn Mawr thesis).

A complete translation of Terence was privately printed for the Roman Society, 1900, 2 volumes, with brief notes and partial bibliography. The most useful available translation is that of the _Phormio_ by M. H. Morgan, Cambridge, Mass., 1894, with the Latin text and reproductions of the Vatican miniatures of costumes. This play has been translated also by Clark, B. H., New York, 1915; _The Self-tormentor_, by Shuckburgh, E. S., Cambridge, 1869, and by Ricord, F. W., New York, 1885. The Loeb Classical Library publishes the translation of John Sargeaunt in 2 volumes. See also Michaut, G., _Sur les tréteaux latins (histoire de la comédie romaine)_, Paris, 1912; Knapp, C., _References in Plautus and Terence to plays, players and playwrights_, Classical Philology, xiv, number 1 (Jan., 1919); and a charming popular study by Lemaître, J., “Térence et Molière,” in _Impressions de théâtre_, vi (1898) 15-27. The better to define ancient conceptions of comedy, Lane Cooper reconstitutes _An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy, with an adaptation of the Poetics and a translation of the ‘Tractatus Coislinianus,’_ New York, 1922.

[25] See the quotation from Apuleius on page 228. The _Onomasticon_ of Julius Pollux enumerates 44 masks sufficient for all the rôles and all the situations of the New Comedy: 10 for old men, 10 for young men, 7 for slaves, 3 for old women, 14 for young women. There are even stock names, e.g., Davos and Chremes. _Miles gloriosus_ was taken over by Latin comedy and again by French seventeenth-century comedy, though in fact neither society had this Athenian type. Over against him is the parasite, often the mover of the intrigue. The slave and he are the most active of the _personæ_. (This note is derived from Lallier.)

[26] The extreme case is the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus with its two Amphitryos and two Sosias. In _Menæchmi_ the servants are doubled; in _Bacchides_, the courtesans.

[27] Greenough’s translation of the argument, prefacing Morgan’s translation of the play.

[28] Plutarch, _Mor._, De gloria Atheniensium, 347 F.

[29] Michaut (139) cites Evanthius _De Fabula_ IV. 4 and Donatus. _Statarius_ seems to be used, in the prologue to the _Adelphi_ and in a passage cited by Michaut from Cicero’s _Brutus_ xxx. 116, of acting. Knapp cites the prologue to the _Self-tormentor_.

[30] “Qui sim, cur ad vos veniam paucis eloquar,” prol. to _Bacchides_; and the play opens with both ladies together on the stage, so that there can be no mistake. Terence, who devotes his prologue usually to rebuttal of detraction, sometimes devotes his whole first act to exposition.