History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Age. Vol. I

by John Colin Dunlop

PLAUTUS,

who availed himself, still more even than his predecessors, of the works of the Greeks. The Old Greek comedy was excessively satirical, and sometimes obscene. Its subjects, as is well known, were not entirely fictitious, but in a great measure real; and neither the highest station, nor the brightest talents, were any security against the unrestrained invectives of the comic muse in her earliest sallies. Cratinus, Eupolis, and Aristophanes, were permitted to introduce on the stage the philosophers, generals, and magistrates of the state with their true countenances, and as it were in propria persona; a license which seems, in some measure, to have been regarded as the badge of popular freedom. It is only from the plays of Aristophanes that we can judge of the spirit of the ancient comedy. Its genius was so wild and strange, that it scarcely admits of definition: and can hardly be otherwise described, than as containing a great deal of allegorical satire on the political measures and manners of the Athenians, and parodies on their tragic poets.

When in Athens the people began to lose their political influence, and when the management of their affairs was vested in fewer hands than formerly, the oligarchical government restrained this excessive license; but while the poets were prohibited from naming the individuals whose actions they exposed, still they represented real characters so justly, though under fictitious appellations, that there could be no mistake with regard to the persons intended. This species of drama, which comprehends some of the later pieces of Aristophanes,—for example, his Plutus,—and is named the Middle comedy, [pg 97]was soon discovered to be as offensive and dangerous as the old. The dramatists being thus at length forced to invent their subjects and characters, comedy became a general yet lively imitation of the common actions of life. All personal allusion was dropped, and the Chorus, which had been the great vehicle of censure and satire, was removed. The new comedy was thus so different in its features from the middle or the old, that Schlegel has been induced to think, that it was formed on the model of the latest tragedians, rather than on the ancient comedy[224]. In the productions of Agathon, and even in some dramas of Euripides, tragedy had descended from its primeval height, and represented the distresses of domestic life, though still the domestic life of kings and heroes. Though Euripides was justly styled by Aristotle the most tragic of all poets, his style possessed neither the energy and sublimity of Æschylus, nor the gravity and stateliness of Sophocles, and it was frequently not much elevated above the language of ordinary conversation. His plots, too, like the Rudens of Plautus, often hinge on the fear of women, lest they be torn from the shrines or altars to which they had fled for protection; and what may be regarded as a confirmation of this opinion is, that Euripides, who had been so severely satirized by Aristophanes, was extravagantly extolled by Philemon, in his own age the most popular writer of the new comedy.

While possessing, perhaps, both less art and fire than the old satirical drama, produced in times of greater public freedom, the new comedy is generally reputed to have been superior in delicacy, regularity, and decorum. But although it represented the characters and manners of real life, yet in these characters and manners—to judge at least from the fragments which remain, and from the Latin imitations—there does not appear to have been much variety. There is always an old father, a lover, and a courtezan; as if formed on each other, like the Platonic and licentious lover in the Spanish romances of chivalry. “Their plots,” says Dryden, “were commonly a little girl, stolen or wandering from her parents, brought back unknown to the city,—there got with child by some one, who, by the help of his servant, cheats his father,—and when her time comes to cry Juno Lucina, one or other sees a little box or cabinet which was carried away with her, and so discovers her to her friends;—if some god do not prevent it, by coming down in a machine, and taking the thanks of it to himself. By the plot you may guess much of the cha[pg 98]racters of the persons; an old father, who would willingly before he dies see his son well married; a debauched son, kind in his nature to his mistress, but miserably in want of money; and a servant, or slave, who has so much art as to strike in with him, and help to dupe his father; a braggadocio captain; a parasite; a lady of pleasure. As for the poor honest maid, on whom the story is built, and who ought to be one of the principal actors in the play, she is commonly mute in it. She has the breeding of the old Elizabeth way: which was, for maids to be seen and not to be heard.” Sometimes, however, her breeding appears in being heard and not seen; and Donatus remarks, that invocations of Juno behind the scenes were the only way in which the severity of the Comœdia palliata allowed young gentlewomen to be introduced. Were we to characterize the ancient drama by appellations of modern invention, it might be said, that the ancient comedy was what we call a comedy of character, and the modern a comedy of intrigue.

Nævius, while inventing plots of his own, had tried to introduce on the Roman stage the style of the old Greek comedy; but his dramas did not succeed, and the fate of their author deterred others from following his dangerous career. The government of Athens, which occupies a chief part in the old comedy, was the most popular of all administrations; and hence not only oratory but comedy claimed the right of ridiculing and exposing it. The first state in Greece became the subject of merriment. In one play, the whole body of the people was represented under the allegorical personage of an old doting driveller; and the pleasantry was not only tolerated but enjoyed by the members of the state itself. Cleon and Lamachus could not have repressed the satire of Aristophanes, as the Metelli checked the invectives of Nævius. Under pretence of patriotic zeal, the Greek comic writers spared no part of the public conduct,—councils, revenues, popular assemblies, judicial proceedings, or warlike enterprizes. Such exposure was a restraint on the ambition of individuals,—a matter of importance to a people jealous of its liberties. All this, however, was quite foreign to the more serious taste, and more aristocratic government, of the Romans, to their estimation of heroes and statesmen, to their respect for their legitimate chiefs, and for the dignity even of a Roman citizen. The profound reverence and proud affection which they entertained for all that exalted the honour of their country, and their extreme sensibility to its slightest disgrace, must have interdicted any exhibition, in which its glory was humbled, or its misfortunes held up to mockery. They would not have laughed so [pg 99]heartily at the disasters of a Carthaginian, as the Athenians did at those of a Peloponnesian or Sicilian war. The disposition which led them to return thanks to Varro, after the battle of Cannæ, that he had not despaired of the republic, was very different from the temper which excited such contumelious laughter at the promoters of the Spartan war, and the advisers of the fatal expedition to Syracuse[225]. When the Roman people were seriously offended, the Tarpeian rock, and not the stage, was the spot selected for their vengeance.

Accordingly, Plautus found it most prudent to imitate the style of the new comedy, which had been brought to perfection, about half a century before his birth, by Menander. All his comedies, however, are not strictly formed on this model, as a few partake of the nature of the middle comedy: not that, like Nævius, he satirized the senators or consuls; but I have little doubt that many of his dramatis personæ, such as the miser and braggart captain, were originally caricatures of citizens of Athens. In borrowing from the Greek, he did not, like modern writers of comedy who wish to conceal their plagiarisms, vary the names of his characters, the scene of action, and other external circumstances, while the substance of the drama remained the same; on the contrary, he preserved every circumstance which could tend to give his dramatic pieces a Greek air:—

“Atque hoc poetæ faciunt in comœdiis;

Omnes res gestas esse Athenis autumant,

Quo illud vobis Græcum videatur magis.”

Plautus was the son of a freedman, and was born at Sarsina, a town in Umbria, about the year 525. He was called Plautus from his splay feet, a defect common among the Umbrians. Having turned his attention to the stage, he soon realized a considerable fortune by the popularity of his dramas; but by risking it in trade, or spending it, according others, on the splendid dresses which he wore as an actor, and theatrical amusements being little resorted to, on account of the famine then prevailing at Rome, he was quickly reduced to such [pg 100]necessity as forced him to labour at a hand-mill for his daily support[226] an employment which at Rome, was the ordinary punishment of a worthless slave. Many of his plays were written in these unfavourable circumstances, and of course have not obtained all the perfection which might otherwise have resulted from his knowledge of life, and his long practice in the dramatic art.

Of the performances of Plautus, the first, in that alphabetical order in which, for want of a better, they are usually arranged, is,

Amphitryon.—Personal resemblances are a most fertile subject of comic incidents, and almost all nations have had their Amphitryon. The Athenians in particular gladly availed themselves of this subject, as it afforded an opportunity of throwing ridicule on the dull Bœotians. It is not certain, however, from what Greek author the play of Plautus was taken. Being announced as a tragi-comedy, some critics[227] have conjectured that it was most probably imitated from an Amphitryon mentioned by Athenæus,[228] which was the work of Rhinton, a poet of Tarentum, who wrote mock-tragedies and tragi-comedies styled Rhintonica or Hilarotragœdiæ. M. Schlegel, however, alleges that it was borrowed from a play of Epicharmus the Sicilian. The subjects indeed of the ancient Greek comedy, particularly in the hands of Epicharmus, its inventor, were frequently derived from mythology. Even in its maturity, these topics were not renounced, as appears from the titles of several lost pieces of Aristophanes and his contemporaries. Such fabulous traditions continued sometimes to occupy the scenes of the middle comedy, and it was not till the new was introduced that the sphere of the comic drama was confined to the representation of private and domestic life. Euripides also is said to have written a play entitled Alcmena, on the story of Amphitryon, but how far Plautus may have been indebted to him for his plot cannot be now ascertained. It is probable enough, however, that some of the serious parts may have been copied from the Alcmena of Euripides. The catastrophe of Plautus’s Amphitryon is brought about by a storm; and we learn from the Rudens, another play of Plautus, that a tempest was introduced by the Greek tragedian—

“Non ventus fuit, verum Alcmena Euripidis.”

The Latin play is introduced by a prologue which is spoken by the God Mercury, and was explanatory to the audience of the circumstances preceding the opening of the piece, and the situation of the principal characters. The term prologue has been very arbitrarily used. In one sense it merely signified the induction to the dramatic action, which informed the spectator of what was necessary to be known for duly understanding it. Aristotle calls that part of a tragedy the prologue, which precedes the first song of the chorus.[229] In the Greek tragedies, the prologue was often a long introductory and narrative monologue. Sophocles, however, so dialogued this part of the drama, that it has no appearance of a contrivance to instruct, but seems a natural conversation of the dramatis personæ. Euripides, on the other hand, fell more into the style of the formal narrative prologue, since, before entering on the action or dialogue, one of the persons destined to bear a part in the drama frequently explained to the audience, in a continued discourse, what things seemed essential for understanding the piece. Sometimes, however, in the Greek tragedies, the speaker of this species of prologue is not a person of the drama. In general, these artificial prologues of explanatory narration are addressed directly to the spectators, and hence approach nearly to the prologue, in our acceptation of the term. The poets of the ancient comedy, as we see from Aristophanes, usually adopted, like Sophocles, the mode of explaining preliminary circumstances in the course of the action, whence it has been considered that the old Greek comedies have no prologue; and they certainly have none in the strict modern sense, though the method of Euripides has been employed to a certain degree in the Wasps and Birds, in the former of which Xanthias, interrupting the dialogue with Sosias, turns abruptly to the spectators, and unfolds the argument of the fable. The poets of the middle and new comedy, while departing from Aristophanes in many things, followed him in the form of the prologue; and, as they improved in refinement, interwove still closer the requisite exposition of the fable with its action. The Romans thus found among the Greeks, prologues in a continued narrative, and prologues where the exposition was mixed with the action. From these models they formed a new species, peculiar to themselves, which is entirely separated from the action of the drama, and which generally contains an explanation of circumstances and characters, with such gentle recommendation of the piece as suited the purpose of the author. We shall [pg 102]find that the Latin prologues, dressed up in the form of narrative, sometimes preceded the dramatic induction of the action, and at other times, as in the Miles Gloriosus, followed it. The prologue of the Mostellaria is on the plan adopted by Aristophanes, and that of the Cistellaria is conformable to the practice of our own theatre. To other plays, such as the Epidicus and Bacchides, there were originally no prologues, but they were prefixed after the death of the author, in order to explain the reasons for bringing them forward anew. It thus appears that in his prologues Plautus approached nearer to Euripides than to those comic writers whom in his argument and all other respects he chiefly followed. The prologues of Terence, again, seldom announce the subject. In the manner of the Greeks, his induction is laid in the first scene of the play, and the prologues seem chiefly intended to acknowledge the Greek original of his drama, and to explain matters personal to himself. They rather resemble the choruses of Aristophanes, which in the Wasps and other plays directly address the audience in favour of the poet, and complain of the unjust reception which his dramas occasionally experienced.

In the prologue to the Amphitryon, Plautus calls his play a tragi-comedy[230]; probably not so much that there is any thing tragical in the subject, (although the character of Alcmena is a serious one,) as, because it is of that mixed kind in which the highest as well as lowest characters are introduced. The plot is chiefly founded on the well-known mythological incident of Jupiter assuming the figure of Amphitryon, general of the Thebans, during his absence with the army, and by that means imposing on his wife Alcmena. The play opens while Jupiter is supposed to be with the object of his passion. Sosia, the servant of Amphitryon, who had been sent on before by his master, from the port to announce his victory and approach, is introduced on the stage, proceeding towards the palace of Amphitryon. While expressing his astonishment at the length of the night, he is met, in front of his master’s house, by Mercury, who had assumed his form, and who, partly by blows and threats, and partly by leading him to doubt of his own identity, succeeds in driving him back. This gives Jupiter time to prosecute his amour, and he departs at dawn. The [pg 103]improbable story related by Sosia is not believed by his master, who himself now advances towards his house, from which Alcmena comes forth, lamenting the departure of her supposed husband; but seeing Amphitryon, she expresses her surprise at his speedy return. The jealousy of Amphitryon is thus excited, and he quits the stage, in order to bring evidence that he had never till that time quitted his army. Jupiter then returns, and Amphitryon is afterwards refused access to his own house by Mercury, who pretends that he does not know him. At length Jupiter and Amphitryon are confronted. They are successively questioned as to the events of the late war by the pilot of the ship in which Amphitryon had returned. As Jupiter also stands this test of identity, the real Amphitryon is wrought up to such a pitch of rage and despair, that he resolves to wreak vengeance on his whole family, and is provoked even to utter blasphemies, by setting the gods at defiance. He is supposed immediately after this to have been struck down by lightning, as, in the next scene, Bromia, the attendant of Alcmena, rushes out from the house, alarmed at the tempest, and finds Amphitryon lying prostrate on the earth. When he has recovered, she announces to him that during the storm Alcmena had given birth to twins:—

“Amph. Ain’ tu Geminos? Brom. Geminos. Amph. Dii me servent.”

Jupiter then, in propria persona, reveals the whole mystery, and Amphitryon appears to be much flattered by the honour which had been paid him.

In this play the jealousy and perplexity of Amphitryon are well portrayed, and the whole character of Alcmena is beautifully drawn. She is represented as an affectionate wife, full of innocence and simplicity, and her distress at the suspicions of the real Amphitryon is highly interesting. The English translator of Plautus has remarked the great similarity of manners between her and Desdemona, while placed in similar circumstances. Both express indignation at being suspected, but love for their husbands makes them easily reconciled. The reader, however, feels that Amphitryon and Alcmena remain in an awkward situation at the conclusion of the piece. It must also be confessed, that the Roman dramatist has assigned a strange part to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, at whose festivals this play is said to have been usually performed; but, as Voltaire has remarked, “Il n’y a que ceux qui ne savent point combien les hommes agissent peu consequemment, qui puissent etre surpris, qu’on se moqua publiquement au theatre des memes dieux qu’on adorait dans les temples.”

Mistakes are a most fruitful subject of comic incident, and never could there be such mistakes as those which arise from two persons being undistinguishable: but then, in order to give an appearance of verisimilitude on the stage, it was almost necessary that the play should be represented with masks, which could alone exhibit the perfect resemblance of the two Amphitryons and the two Sosias; and even with this advantage, such errors, in order to possess dramatic plausibility, must have been founded on some mythological tradition. The subject, therefore, is but an indifferent one for the modern stage. Accordingly, Ludovico Dolce, who first imitated this comedy in his play entitled Marito, has grossly erred in transporting the scene from Thebes to Padua, and assigning the parts of Jupiter and Amphitryon to Messer Muzio and Fabrizio, two Italian citizens, who were so similar in appearance, that the wife of one of them, though a sensible and virtuous woman, is deceived night and day, during her husband’s absence, by the resemblance, and the deception is aided by the still more marvellous likeness of their domestics. In place of Jupiter appearing in the clouds, and justifying Alcmena, the Italian has introduced a monk, called Fra Girolamo, who is bribed to persuade the foolish husband that a spirit (Folletto) had one night transported him to Padua, during sleep, which satisfactorily accounts to him for the situation in which he finds his wife on his return home.

These absurdities have been in a great measure avoided in the imitation by Rotrou, who may be regarded as the father of the French drama, having first exploded the bad taste which pervades the pieces of Hardy. His comedy entitled Les Deux Sosies, is completely framed on the Amphitryon of Plautus, only the prologue is spoken by the inveterate Juno, who declaims against her rivals, and enumerates the labours which she has in store for the son of Alcmena.

But by far the most celebrated imitation of Plautus is the Amphitrion of Moliere, who has managed with much delicacy a subject in itself not the most decorous. He has in general followed the steps of the Roman dramatist, but where he has departed from them, he has improved on the original. Instead of the dull and inconsistent prologue delivered by Mercury, which explains the subject of the piece, he has introduced a scene between Mercury and Night, (probably suggested by the Dialogues of Lucian between Mercury and the Sun on the same occasion,) in which Mercury announces the state of matters while requesting Night to prolong her stay on earth for the sake of Jupiter. At the commencement of the piece, Plautus has made Sosia repeat to himself a very minute, though picturesque [pg 105]account of the victory of the Thebans, as preparatory to a proper description of it to Alcmena. This Moliere has formed into a sort of dialogued soliloquy between Sosia and his Lantern, which rehearses the answers anticipated from Alcmena, till the discourse is at length interrupted by the arrival of Mercury, when the speaker has lost himself among the manœuvres of the troops. In the Latin Amphitryon, Mercury threatens Sosia, and he replies to his rodomontade by puns and quibbles, which have been omitted by the French poet, who makes the spectators laugh by the excessive and ridiculous terror of Sosia, and not by pleasantries inconsistent with his feelings and situation. Moliere has copied from Plautus the manner in which Sosia is gradually led to doubt of his own identity: his consequent confusion of ideas has been closely imitated, as also the ensuing scenes of the quarrel and reconciliation between Jupiter and Alcmena. He has added the part of Cleanthes, the wife of Sosia, suggested to him by a line put into the mouth of Sosia by Plautus—

“Quid me expectatum non rere amicæ meæ venturum.”

It was certainly ingenious to make the adventures of the slave a parody on those of his master, and this new character produces an agreeable scene between her and Mercury, who is little pleased with the caresses of this antiquated charmer. On the other hand, the French dramatist has omitted the examination of the double Amphitryons, and nearly introduces them in the presence of two Thebans: Amphitryon brings his friends to avenge him, by assaulting Jupiter, when that god appears in the clouds and announces the future birth of Hercules. Through the whole comedy, Moliere has given a different colour to the behaviour of Jupiter, from that thrown over it by Plautus. In the Latin play he assumes quite the character of the husband; but with Moliere he is more of a lover and gallant, and pays Alcmena so many amorous compliments, that she exclaims,

“Amphitrion, en verité,

Vous vous moquez de tenir ce langage!”

Moliere evidently felt that Alcmena and Amphitryon were placed in an awkward situation, in spite of the assurances of Jupiter—

“Alcmene est toute a toi, quelque soin qu’on employe;

Et ce doit a tes feux etre un objet bien doux,

De voir, que pour lui plaire, il n’est point d’autre voie,

Que de paraitre son epoux.

Sosie. Le seigneur Jupiter sait dorer sa pilule.”

In these, and several other lines, Moliere has availed himself of the old French play of Rotrou. The lively expression of Sosia,

“Le veritable Amphitryon est l’Amphitryon ou l’on dine,”

which has passed into a sort of proverb, has been suggested by a similar phrase of Rotrou’s Sosia—

“Point point d’Amphitryon ou l’on ne dine point;”

and the lines,

“J’etais venu, je vous jure,

Avant que je fusse arrivé,”

are nearly copied from Rotrou’s

“J’etais chez-nous avant mon arrivé;”

and Sosia’s boast, in the older French play,

“Il m’est conforme en tout—il est grand, il est fort,”

has probably suggested to Moliere the lines,

“Des pieds, jusqu’ a la tete il est comme moi fait,

Beau, l’air noble, bienpris, les manieres charmantes.”

The Amphitrion of Moliere was published in 1668, so that Dryden, in his imitation of Plautus’s Amphitryon, which first appeared in 1690, had an opportunity of also availing himself of the French piece. But, even with this assistance, he has done Plautus less justice than his predecessor. He has sometimes borrowed the scenes and incidents of Moliere; but has too frequently given us ribaldry in the low characters, and bombast in the higher, instead of the admirable grace and liveliness of the French dramatist. His comedy commences earlier than either the French or Latin play. Phœbus makes his appearance at the opening of the piece. The first arrival of Jupiter in the shape of Amphitryon is then represented, apparently in order to introduce Phædra, the attendant of Alcmena, exacting a promise from her mistress, before she knew, who had arrived, that they should that night be bed-fellows as usual since Amphitryon’s absence. To this Phædra, Dryden has assigned an amour with Mercury, to the great jealousy of Sosia’s wife, Bromia; and has mixed up the whole play with pastoral dialogues and rondeaus, to which, as he[pg 107] informs us in his dedication, “the numerous choir of fair ladies gave so just an applause.” The scenes of a higher description are those which have been best managed. The latest editor, indeed, of the works of Dryden, thinks that in these parts he has surpassed both the French and Roman dramatist. “The sensation to be expressed,” he remarks, “is not that of sentimental affection, which the good father of Olympus was not capable of feeling; but love of that grosser and subordinate kind, which prompted Jupiter in his intrigues, has been expressed by none of the ancient poets in more beautiful verse, than that in which Dryden has clothed it, in the scenes between Jupiter and Alcmena.” Milbourne, who afterwards so violently attacked the English poet, highly compliments him on the success of this effort of his dramatic muse—

“Not Phœbus could with gentler words pursue

His flying Daphne; not the morning dew

Falls softer, than the words of amorous Jove,

When melting, dying, for Alcmena’s love.”

The character, however, of Alcmena is, I think, less interesting in the English than in the Latin play. She is painted by Plautus as delighted with the glory of her husband. In the second scene of the second act, after a beautiful complaint on account of his absence, she consoles herself with the thoughts of his military renown, and concludes with an eulogy on valour, which would doubtless be highly popular in a Roman theatre during the early ages of the Republic—

—— “Virtus præmium est optimum,

Virtus omnibus rebus anteit profecto.

Libertas, salus, vita, res, parenteis,

Patria, et prognati tutantur, servantur:

Virtus omnia in se habet; omnia adsunt bona, quem pen’est virtus.”

Dryden’s Alcmena is represented as quite different in her sentiments: She exclaims, on parting with Jupiter,

“Curse on this honour, and this public fame!

Would you had less of both, and more of love!”

Lady M. W. Montague gives a curious account, in one of her letters, of a German play on the subject of Amphitryon, which she saw acted at Vienna.—“As that subject had been already handled by a Latin, French, and English poet, I was curious to see what an Austrian author could make of it. I understand enough of that language to comprehend the greatest part of it; and, besides, I took with me a lady that had the [pg 108]goodness to explain to me every word. I thought the house very low and dark; but the comedy admirably recompensed that defect. I never laughed so much in my life. It began with Jupiter falling in love out of a peep-hole in the clouds, and ended with the birth of Hercules. But what was most pleasant was, the use Jupiter made of his metamorphosis; for you no sooner saw him under the figure of Amphitryon, but, instead of flying to Alcmena with the raptures Dryden puts into his mouth, he sends for Amphitryon’s tailor, and cheats him of a laced coat, and his banker of a bag of money—a Jew of a diamond ring, and bespeaks a great supper in his name; and the greatest part of the comedy turns upon poor Amphitryon’s being tormented by these people for their debts. Mercury uses Sosia in the same manner; but I could not easily pardon the liberty the poet had taken of larding his play with not only indecent expressions, but such gross words as I do not think our mob would suffer from a mountebank.”

In nothing can the manners of different ages and countries be more distinctly traced, than in the way in which the same subject is treated on the stage. In Plautus, may be remarked the military enthusiasm and early rudeness of the Romans—in the Marito of L. Dolce, the intrigues of the Italians, and the constant interposition of priests and confessors in domestic affairs—in Dryden, the libertinism of the reign of Charles the Second—and in Moliere, the politeness and refinement of the court of Louis.

Asinaria, is translated from the Greek of Demophilus, a writer of the Middle comedy. The subject is the trick put on an ass-driver by two roguish slaves, in order to get hold of the money which he brought in payment of some asses he had purchased from their master, that they might employ it in supplying the extravagance of their master’s son. The old man, however, is not the dupe in this play: On the contrary, he is a confederate in the plot, which was chiefly devised against his wife, who, having brought her husband a great portion, imperiously governed his house and family. By this means the youth is restored to the possession of a mercenary mistress, from whom he had been excluded by a more wealthy rival. The father stipulates, as a reward for the part which he had acted in this stratagem, that he also should have a share in the favours of his son’s mistress; and the play concludes with this old wretch being detected by his wife, carousing at a nocturnal banquet, a wreath of flowers on his head, with his son and the courtezan. It would appear, from the concluding address to the spectators, that neither the moral sense of the author, nor of his audience, was very strong [pg 109]or correct, as the bystanders on the stage, so far from condemning these abandoned characters, declare that the most guilty of the three had done nothing new or surprising, or more than what was customary:

“Grex. Hic senex, si quid, clam uxorem, suo animo fecit volup,

Neque novum, neque mirum fecit, nec secus quam alii solent:

Nec quisqua’st tam in genio duro; nec tam firmo pectore,

Quin ubi quicquam occasionis sit, sibi faciat bene.”

Lucilius, while remarking in one of his fragments, that the Chremes of Terence had preserved a just medium in morals by his obliging demeanour towards his son, had ample grounds for observing, that the Demænetus of Plautus had run into an extreme—

“Chremes in medium, in summum ire Ademænetus[231].”

However exceptionable in point of morals, this play possesses much comic vivacity and interest of character. The courtezan and the slaves are sketched with spirit and freedom, and the rapacious disposition of the female dealer in slave-girls, is well developed.

It is curious that this immoral comedy should have been so frequently acted in the Italian convents. In particular, a translation in terza rima was represented in the monastery of St Stefano at Venice, in 1514[232]. It was not of a nature to be often imitated by modern writers, but Moliere, who has borrowed so many of the plots of other plays of Plautus, has extracted from this drama several situations and ideas. Cleæreta, in the third scene of the first Act of the Asinaria, gives, as her advice, to a gallant—

“Neque ille scit quid det, quid damni faciat: illi rei studet;

Vult placere sese amicæ, vult mihi, vult pedissequæ,

Vult famulis, vult etiam ancillis; et quoque catulo meo

Sublanditur novus amator.”

In like manner, in the Femmes Savantes, Henriette, while counselling Clitandre to be complaisant, says—

“Un amant fait sa cour ou s’attache son cœur,

Il veut de tout le monde y gagner la faveur;

Et pour n’avoir personne a sa flamme contraire,

Jusqu’au chien du logis il s’efforce de plaire.”

Aulularia.—It is not known from what Greek author this play has been taken; but there can be no doubt that it had [pg 110]its archetype in the Greek drama. The festivals of Ceres and Bacchus, which in their origin were innocent institutions, intended to celebrate the blessings of harvest and vintage, having degenerated by means of priestcraft, became schools of superstition and debauchery. From the adventures and intrigues which occurred at the celebration of religious mysteries, the comic poets of Greece frequently drew the incidents of their dramas[233], which often turned on damsels having been rendered, on such occasions, the mothers of children, without knowing who were the fathers. In like manner, the intrigue of the Aulularia has its commencement in the daughter of Euclio being violated during the celebration of the mysteries of Ceres, without being aware from whom she had received the injury. The Aulularia, however, is principally occupied with the display of the character of a Miser. No vice has been so often pelted with the good sentences of moralists, or so often ridiculed on the stage, as avarice; and of all the characters that have been there represented, that of the miser in the Aulularia of Plautus, is perhaps the most entertaining and best supported. Comic dramas have been divided into those of intrigue and character, and the Aulularia is chiefly of the latter description. It is so termed from Aula, or Olla, the diminutive of which is Aulula, signifying the little earthen pot that contained a treasure which had been concealed by his grandfather, but had been discovered by Euclio the miser, who is the principal character of the play. The prologue is spoken by the Lar Familiaris of the house; and as the play has its origin in the discovery of a treasure deposited under a hearth, the introduction of this imaginary Being, if we duly consider the superstitions of the Romans, was happy and appropriate. The account given by the Lar of the successive generations of misers, is also well imagined, as it convinces us that Euclio was a genuine miser, and of the true breed. The household god had disclosed the long-concealed treasure, as a reward for the piety of Euclio’s daughter, who presented him with offerings of frankincense and of wine, which, however, it is not very probable the miser’s daughter could have procured, especially before the discovery of the treasure. The story of the precious deposit, of which the spectators could not possibly have been informed without this supernatural interposition, being thus related, we are introduced at once to the knowledge of the principal character, who, having found the treasure, employs himself in guarding it, and lives in continual apprehension, lest it should be dis[pg 111]covered that he possesses it. Accordingly, he is brought on the stage driving off his servant, that she may not spy him while visiting this hoard, and afterwards giving directions of the strictest economy. He then leaves home on an errand very happily imagined—an attendance at a public distribution of money to the poor. Megadorus now proposes to marry his daughter, and Euclio comically enough supposes that he has discovered something concerning his newly acquired wealth; but on his offering to take her without a portion, he is tranquillized, and agrees to the match. Knowing the disposition of his intended father-in-law, Megadorus sends provisions to his house, and also cooks, to prepare a marriage-feast, but the miser turns them out, and keeps what they had brought. At length his alarm for discovery rises to such a height, that he hides his treasure in a grove, consecrated to Sylvanus, which lay beyond the walls of the city. While thus employed, he is observed by the slave of Lyconides, the young man who had violated the miser’s daughter. Euclio coming to recreate himself with the sight of his gold, finds that it is gone. Returning home in despair, he is met by Lyconides, who, hearing of the projected nuptials between his uncle and the miser’s daughter, now apologizes for his conduct; but the miser applies all that he says concerning his daughter to his lost treasure. This play is unfortunately mutilated, and ends with the slave of Lyconides confessing to his master that he has found the miser’s hoard, and offering to give it up as the price of his freedom. It may be presumed, however, that, in the original, Lyconides got possession of the treasure, and by its restoration to Euclio, so far conciliated his favour, that he obtained his daughter in marriage. This conclusion, accordingly, has been adopted by those who have attempted to finish the comedy in the spirit of the Latin dramatist. It is completed on this plan by Thornton, the English translator of Plautus, and by Antonius Codrus Urceus, a professor in the University of Bologna, who died in the year 1500. Urceus has also made the miser suddenly change his nature, and liberally present his new son-in-law with the restored treasure.

The restless inquietude of Euclio, in concealing his gold in many different places—his terror on seeing the preparations for the feast, lest the wine brought in was meant to intoxicate him, that he might be robbed with greater facility—his dilemma at being obliged to miss the distribution to the poor—are all admirable traits of extreme and habitual avarice. Even his recollection of the expense of a rope, when, in despair at the loss of his treasure, he resolves to hang himself, though a little [pg 112]overdone, is sufficiently characteristic. But while the part of a confirmed miser has been comically and strikingly represented in these touches, it is stretched in others beyond all bounds of probability. When Euclio entreats his female servant to spare the cobwebs—when it is said, that he complains of being pillaged if the smoke issue from his house—and that he preserves the parings of his nails—we feel this to be a species of hoarding which no miser could think of or enjoy[234].

One of the earliest imitations of the Aulularia was, La Sporta, a prose Italian comedy, printed at Florence in 1543, under the name of Giovam-Battista Gelli, but attributed by some to Machiavel. It is said, that the great Florentine historian left this piece, in an imperfect state, in the hands of his friend Bernardino di Giordano of Florence, in whose house his comedies were sometimes represented, whence it passed into the possession of Gelli, a writer of considerable humour, who prepared it for the press; and, according to a practice not unfrequent in Italy at different periods, published it as his own production[235]. The play is called Sporta, from the basket in which the treasure was contained. The plot and incidents in Plautus have been closely followed, in so far as was consistent with modern Italian manners; and where they varied, the circumstances, as well as names, have been adapted by the author to the customs and ideas of his country. Euclio is called Ghirorgoro, and Megadorus, Lapo; the former being set up as a satire on avarice, the latter as a pattern of proper economy.

The principal plot of The case is altered, a comedy attributed to Ben Jonson, has been taken, as shall be afterwards shown from the Captivi of Plautus; but the character of Jaques is [pg 113]more closely formed on that of Euclio, than any miser on the modern stage. Jaques having purloined the treasure of a French Lord Chamont, whose steward he had been, and having also stolen his infant daughter, fled with them to Italy. The girl, when she grew up, being very beautiful, had many suitors; whence her reputed father suspects it is discovered that he possesses hidden wealth, in the same manner as Euclio does in the scene with Megadorus. We have a representation of his excessive anxiety lest he lose this treasure—his concealment of it—and his examination of Juniper, the cobbler, whom he suspects to have stolen it; which corresponds to Euclio’s examination of Strobilus. Most other modern dramatists have made their miser in love; but in the breast of Jaques all passions are absorbed in avarice, which is exhibited to us not so much in ridiculous instances of minute domestic economy, as in absolute adoration of his gold:

“I’ll take no leave, sweet prince, great emperor!

But see thee every minute, king of kings!”

It is thus he feasts his senses with his treasure: and the very ground in which it is hidden is accounted hallowed:

“This is the palace, where the god of gold

Shines like the sun of sparkling majesty!”

But the most celebrated imitation of the Aulularia is Moliere’s Avare, one of the best and most wonderful imitations ever produced. Almost nothing is of the French dramatist’s own invention. Scenes have been selected by him from a number of different plays, in various languages, which have no relation to each other; but every thing is so well connected, that the whole appears to have been invented for this single comedy. Though chiefly indebted to Plautus, he has not so closely followed his original as in the Amphitryon. One difference, which materially affects the plots of the two plays and characters of the misers, is, that Euclio was poor till he unexpectedly found the treasure. He was not known to be rich, and lived in constant dread of his wealth being discovered. When any thing was said about riches, he applied it to himself; and when well received or caressed by any one, he supposed that he was ensnared. Harpagon, on the other hand, had amassed a fortune, and was generally known to possess it, which gives an additional zest to the humour, as we thus enter into the merriment of his family and neighbours; whereas the penury of Euclio could scarcely have appeared unreasonable to the bystanders, who were not in the secret of the acquired [pg 114]treasure. Moliere has also made his miser in love, or at least resolved to marry, and amuses us with his anxiety, in believing himself under the necessity of giving a feast to his intended bride; which is still better than Euclio’s consternation at the supper projected by his intended son-in-law. Euclio is constantly changing the place where he conceals his casket; Harpagon allows it to remain, but is chiefly occupied with its security. The idea, however, of so much incident turning on a casket, is not so happily imagined in the French as in the Latin comedy; since, in the latter, it was the whole treasure of which the miser was possessed, and there was at that time no mode of lending it out safely and to advantage. Harpagon gives a collation, but orders the fragments to be sent back to those who had provided it; Euclio retains the provisions, which had been procured at another’s expense. From the restraint imposed by modern manners, and the circumstance of Harpagon being known to be rich, Moliere has been forced to omit the amusing dilemmas in which Euclio is placed with regard to his attendance on the distributions to the poor. In recompense, he has wonderfully improved the scene about the dowry, as also that in which the miser applies what is said concerning his daughter to his lost treasure; and, on the whole, he has displayed the passion of avarice in more of the incidents and relations of domestic life than the Latin poet. Plautus had remained satisfied with exhibiting a miser, who deprived himself of all the comforts of life, to watch night and day over an unproductive treasure; but Moliere went deeper into the mind. He knew that avarice is accompanied with selfishness, and hardness of heart, and falsehood, and mistrust, and usury; and accordingly, all these vices and evil passions are amalgamated with the character of the French miser.

The Aulularia being a play of character, I have been led to compare the most celebrated imitations of it rather in the exhibition of the miserly character than in the incidents of the piece. Many of the latter which occur in the Avare, have not been borrowed from Plautus, yet are not of Moliere’s invention. Thus he has added from the Pedant Joué of Cyrano Bergerac that part of the plot which consists in the love of the miser and his son for the same woman, as also that which relates to Valere, a young gentleman in love with the miser’s daughter, who had got into his service in disguise, and who, when the miser lost his money, which his son’s servant had stolen, was accused by another servant of having purloined it. Moliere’s notion of the miser’s prodigal son borrowing money from a usurer, and the usurer afterwards proving to be his father, is from La Belle Plaideuse, a comedy of Bois-Robert. In an [pg 115]Italian piece, Le Case Svaligiate, prior to the time of Moliere, and in the harlequin taste, Scapin persuades Pantaloon that the young beauty with whom he is captivated returns his love, that she sets a particular value on old age, and dislikes youthful admirers, whence Pantaloon is induced to give his purse to the flatterer. Frosine attacks the vanity of Harpagon in the same manner, but he, though not unmoved by the flattery, retains his money. Moliere has availed himself of a number of other Italian dramas of the same description for scattered remarks and situations. The name of Harpagon has been suggested to him by the continuation of Codrus Urceus, where Strobilus says that the masters of the present day are so avaricious, that they may be called Harpies or Harpagons:

“Tenaces nimium dominos nostra ætas

Tulit, quos Harpagones vocare soleo.”

I do not know where Moliere received the hint of the denouement of his piece. The conclusion of the Aulularia, as already mentioned, is not extant, but it could not have been so improbable and inartificial as the discovery of Valere and Marianne for the children of Thomas D’Alburci, who, under the name of Anselme, had courted the miser’s daughter.

Shadwell, Fielding, and Goldoni, enjoyed the advantage of studying Moliere’s Harpagon for their delineations of Goldingham, Lovegold, and Ottavio. In the miser of Shadwell there is much indecency indeed of his own invention, and some disgusting representations of city vulgarity and vice; but still he is hardly entitled to the praise of so much originality as he claims in his impudent preface.—“The foundation of this play,” says he, “I took from one of Moliere’s, called L’Avare, but that having too few persons, and too little action for an English theatre, I added to both so much, that I may call more than half of this play my own; and I think I may say, without vanity, that Moliere’s part of it has not suffered in my hands. Nor did I ever know a French comedy made use of by the worst of our poets that was not bettered by them. It is not barrenness of art or invention makes us borrow from the French, but laziness; and this was the occasion of my making use of L’Avare.”

Fielding’s Miser, the only one of his comedies which does him credit, is a much more agreeable play than Shadwell’s. The earlier scenes are a close imitation of Moliere, but the concluding ones are somewhat different, and the denouement is perhaps improved. Mariana is in a great measure a new character, and those of the servants are rendered more prominent and important than in the French original.

The miser Ottavio, in Goldoni’s Vero Amico, is entirely copied from Plautus and Moliere. In the Italian play, however, the character is in a great measure episodical, and the principal plot, which gives its title to the piece, and corresponds with that of Diderot’s Fils Naturel, has been invented by the Italian dramatist.

On the whole, Moliere has succeeded best in rendering the passion of avarice hateful: Plautus and Goldoni have only made it ridiculous. The profound and poetical avarice of Jaques possesses something plaintive in its tone, which almost excites our sympathy, and never our laughter; he is represented as a worshipper of gold, somewhat as an old Persian might be of the sun, and he does not raise our contempt by the absurdities of domestic economy. But Harpagon is thoroughly detestable, and is in fact detested by his neighbours, domestics, and children. All these dramatists are accused of having exhibited rather an allegorical representation of avarice, than the living likeness of a human Being influenced by that odious propensity. “Plautus,” says Hurd, “and also Moliere, offended in this, that for the picture of the avaricious man they presented us with a fantastic unpleasing draught of the passion of avarice—I call it a fantastic draught, because it hath no archetype in nature, and it is farther an unpleasing one; from being the delineation of a simple passion, unmixed, it wants

‘The lights and shades, whose well accorded strife

Gives all the strength and colour of our life.’”

This may in general be true, as there are certainly few unmingled passions; but I suspect that avarice so completely engrosses the soul, that a simple and unmixed delineation of it is not remote from nature. “The Euclio of Plautus,” says King, in his Anecdotes, “the Avare of Moliere, and Miser of Shadwell, have been all exceeded by persons who have existed within my own knowledge[236].”

Bacchides:—is so called from two sisters of the name of Bacchis, who are the courtezans in this play. In a prologue, which is supposed to be spoken by Silenus, mounted on an ass, it is said to be taken from a Greek comedy by Philemon. This information, however, cannot be implicitly relied on, as the prologue was not written in the time of Plautus, and is [pg 117]evidently an addition of a comparatively recent date. Some indeed have supposed that it was prefixed by Petrarch; but at all events the following lines could not have been anterior to the conquest of Greece by the Romans:—

“Samos quæ terra sit, nota est omnibus:

Nam maria, terras, monteis, atque insulas

Vostræ legiones reddidere pervias.”

The leading incident in this play—a master’s folly and inadvertence counteracting the deep-laid scheme of a slave to forward his interest, has been employed by many modern dramatists for the groundwork of their plots; as we find from the Inavertito of Nicolo Barbieri, sirnamed Beltramo, the Amant Indiscret of Quinault, Moliere’s Etourdi, and Dryden’s Sir Martin Mar-all.

The third scene of the third act of this comedy, where the father of Pistoclerus speaks with so much indulgence of the follies of youth, has been imitated in Moliere’s Fourberies de Scapin, and the fifth scene of the fourth act has suggested one in Le Marriage Interrompu[237], by Cailhava. If it could be supposed that Dante had read Plautus, the commencement of Lydus’ soliloquy before the door of Bacchis, might be plausibly conjectured to have suggested that thrilling inscription over the gate of hell, in the third Canto of the Inferno—

“Pandite, atque aperite propere januam hanc Orci, obsecro!

Nam equidem haud aliter esse duco; quippe cui nemo advenit,

Nisi quem spes reliquere omnes ——

Per me si va nella città dolente:

Per me si va nell eterno dolore:

Per me si va tra la perduta gente.

* * * * * *

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi, che entrate.”

Captivi.—The subject and plot of the Captivi are of a different description from those of Plautus’ other comedies. No female characters are introduced; and, as it is said in the epilogue, or concluding address to the spectators,

—— “Ad pudicos mores facta hæc fabula est:

Neque in hâc subagitationes sunt, ullave amatio,

Nec pueri suppositio, nec argenti circumductio;

Neque ubi amans adolescens scortum liberet, clam suum patrem.”

Though no females are introduced in it, the Captivi is the most tender and amiable of Plautus’ plays, and may be regarded [pg 118]as of a higher description than his other comedies, since it hinges on paternal affection and the fidelity of friendship. Many of the situations are highly touching, and exhibit actions of generous magnanimity, free from any mixture of burlesque. It has indeed been considered by some critics as the origin of that class of dramas, which, under the title of Comedies Larmoyantes, was at one time so much admired and so fashionable in France[238], and in which wit and humour, the genuine offspring of Thalia, are superseded by domestic sentiment and pathos.

Hegio, an Ætolian gentleman, had two sons, one of whom, when only four years old, was carried off by a slave, and sold by him in Elis. A war having subsequently broken out between the Elians and Ætolians, Hegio’s other son was taken captive by the Elians. The father, with a view of afterwards ransoming his son, by an exchange, purchased an Elian prisoner, called Philocrates, along with his servant Tyndarus; and the play opens with the master, Philocrates, personating his slave, while the slave, Tyndarus, assumes the character of his master. By this means Tyndarus remains a prisoner under his master’s name, while Hegio is persuaded to send the true Philocrates, under the name of Tyndarus, to Elis, in order to effect the exchange of his son. The deception, however, is discovered by Hegio before the return of Philocrates; and the father, fearing that he had thus lost all hope of ransoming his child, condemns Tyndarus to labour in the mines. In these circumstances, Philocrates returns from Elis with Hegio’s son, and also brings along with him the fugitive slave, who had stolen his other son in infancy. It is then discovered that Tyndarus is this child, who, having been sold to the father of Philocrates, was appointed by him to wait on his son, and had been gradually admitted to his young master’s confidence and friendship.

There has been a great dispute among critics and commentators, whether the dramatic unities have been strictly observed in this comedy. M. De Coste, in the preface to his French translation of the Captivi, maintains, that the unities of place, and time, and action, have been closely attended to. Lessing, who translated the play into German, adopted the opinion of De Coste with regard to the observance of the unities, and he has farther pronounced it the most perfect comedy that, in his time, had yet been represented on the stage[239]. A German critic, whose letter addressed to Lessing is published in that [pg 119]author’s works[240], has keenly opposed these opinions, discussing at considerable length the question of the unities of action, time, and place, as also pointing out many supposed inconsistencies and improbabilities in the conduct of the drama. He objects, in point of verisimilitude, to the long and numerous aparts—the soliloquies of the parasite, which begin the first three acts,—the frequent mention of the market-places and streets of Rome, while the scene is laid in a town of Greece,—and the sudden as well as unaccountable appearance of Stalagmus, the fugitive slave, at the end of the drama. The most serious objection, however, is that which relates to the violation of the dramatic unity of time. The scene is laid in Calydon, the capital of Ætolia; and, at the end of the second act, Philocrates proceeds from that city to Elis, transacts there a variety of affairs, and returns before the play is concluded. Between these two places the distance is fifty miles; and in going from one to the other it was necessary to cross the bay of Corinth. It is therefore impossible (contends this critic,) that De Coste can be accurate in maintaining that the duration of the drama is only seven or eight hours. Allowing the poet, however, the greatest poetical license, and giving for his play the extended period of twenty-four hours, it is scarcely possible that the previous parts of the drama could have been gone through, and the long voyage accomplished, in this space of time. But it farther appears, that Plautus himself did not wish to claim this indulgence, and intended to crowd the journey and all the preceding dramatic incidents into twelve hours at most. He evidently means that the action should be understood as commencing with the morning: Hegio says, in the second scene of the first act,

“Ego ibo ad fratrem, ad alios captivos meos,

Visum ne nocte hâc quippiam turbaverint;”

and it is evident that the action terminates with the evening meal, the preparations for which conclude the fourth act. To all this Lessing replied, that there was no reason to suppose that the scene was laid in Calydon, or that the journey was made to the town of Elis, and that it might easily have been accomplished within the time prescribed by the dramatic rule of unities, if nearer points of the Ætolian and Elian territories be taken than their capitals.

Some of the characters in the Captivi are very beautifully drawn. Hegio is an excellent representation of a respectable [pg 120]rich old citizen: He is naturally a humane good-humoured man, but his disposition is warped by excess of paternal tenderness. There is not in any of the comedies of Plautus, a more agreeable and interesting character than Tyndarus: and no delineation can be more pleasing than that of his faithful attachment to Philocrates, by whom he was in return implicitly trusted, and considered rather in the light of a friend than a slave. In this play, as in most others of Plautus, the parasite is a character somewhat of an episodical description: He goes about prowling for a supper, and is associated to the main subject of the piece only by the delight which he feels at the prospect of a feast, to honour the return of Hegio’s son. The parasites of Plautus are almost as deserving a dissertation as Shakspeare’s clowns. Parasite, as is well known, was a name originally applied in Greece to persons devoted to the service of the gods, and who were appointed for the purpose of keeping the consecrated provisions of the temples. Diodorus of Sinope, as quoted by Athenæus[241], after speaking of the dignity of the sacred parasites of Hercules, (who was himself a noted gourmand,) mentions that the rich, in emulation of this demi-god, chose as followers persons called parasites, who were not selected for their virtues or talents, but were remarkable for extravagant flattery to their superiors, and insolence to those inferiors who approached the persons of their patrons. This was the character which came to be represented on the stage. We learn from Athenæus[242], that a parasite was introduced in one of his plays by Epicharmus, the founder of the Greek comedy. The parasite of this ancient dramatist lay at the feet of the rich, eat the offals from their tables, and drank the dregs of their cups. He speaks of himself as of a person ever ready to dine abroad when invited, and when any one is to be married, to go to his house without an invitation—to pay for his good cheer by exciting the merriment of the company, and to retire as soon as he had eat and drunk sufficiently, without caring whether or not he was lighted out by the slaves[243]. In the most ancient comedies, however, this character was not denominated parasite, and was first so called in the plays of Araros, the son of Aristophanes, and one of the earliest authors of the middle comedy. Antiphanes, a dramatist of the same class, has given a very full description of the vocation of a parasite. The part, however, did not become [pg 121]extremely common till the introduction of the new comedy, when Diphilus, whose works were frequently imitated on the Roman stage, particularly distinguished himself by his delineation of the parasitical character[244]. In the Greek theatre, the part was usually represented by young men, dressed in a black or brown garb, and wearing masks expressive of malignant gaiety. They carried a goblet suspended round their waists, probably lest the slaves of their patrons should fill to them in too small cups; and also a vial of oil to be used at the bath, which was a necessary preparation before sitting down to table, for which the parasite required to be always ready at a moment’s warning[245].

It was thus, too, that the character was represented on the Roman stage; and it would farther appear, that the parasites, in the days of Plautus, carried with them a sort of Joe Miller, as a manual of wit, with which they occasionally refreshed their vivacity. Thus the parasite, in the Stichus, says,

“Ibo intro ad libros, et discam de dictis melioribus;”

and again—

“Libros inspexi, tam confido, quam potest,

Me meum obtenturum ridiculis meis.”

The parasite naturally became a leading character of the Roman stage. In spite of the pride and boasted national independence of its citizens, the whole system of manners at Rome was parasitical. The connection between patron and client, which was originally the cordial intercourse of reciprocal services, soon became that of haughty superiority on the one side, and sordid adulation on the other. Every client was in fact the parasite of some patrician, whose litter he often followed like a slave, conforming to all his caprices, and submitting to all his insults, for the privilege of being placed at the lowest seat of the patron’s table, and there repaying this indelicate hospitality by the most servile flattery. On the stage, the principal use of the parasite was to bring out the other characters from the canvass. Without Gnatho, the Thraso of Terence would have possessed less confidence; and without his flatterer, Pyrgopolinices would never have recollected breaking an elephant’s thigh by a blow of his fist.

The parasite, in the Captivi, may be considered as a fair enough representative of his brethren in the other plays of [pg 122]Plautus. He submits patiently to all manner of ignominious treatment[246]—his spirits rise and sink according as his prospects of a feast become bright or clouded—he speaks a great deal in soliloquies, in which he talks much of the jests by which he attempted to recommend himself as a guest at the feasts of the Great, but we are not favoured with any of these jests. In such soliloquies, too, he rather expresses what would justly be thought of him by others, than what even a parasite was likely to say of himself.

The parasite is not a character which has been very frequently represented on the modern stage. It is not one into which an Italian audience, who are indifferent to good cheer, would heartily enter. Accordingly, the parasite is not a common character in the native drama of Italy, and is chiefly exhibited in the old comedies of Ariosto and Aretine, which are directly imitated from the plays of Plautus or Terence; but even in them this character does not precisely coincide with the older and more genuine school of parasites. Ligurio, who is called the parasite in the Mandragora of Machiavel, rather corresponds to the intriguing slave than to the parasite of the Roman drama; or at least he resembles the more modern parasites, who, like the Phormio of Terence, ingratiated themselves with their patrons by serviceable roguery, rather than by flattery. Ipocrito, who, in Aretine’s comedy of that name, is also styled the parasite, is a sort of Tartuffe, with charitable and religious maxims constantly in his mouth. He does not insinuate himself into the confidence of his patrons by a gaping admiration of their foolish sayings, but by extolling their virtues, and smoothing over their vices; and so far from being treated with any sort of contumely, he is held in high consideration, and interposes in all domestic arrangements.

It is still more difficult to find a true parasite on the English stage. Sir John Falstaff, though something of a parasite, is as original as he is inimitable. Lazarillo, the hungry courtier in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Woman Hater, and Justice Greedy, in Massinger’s New Way to Pay Old Debts, to whom Sir Giles Overreach gives the command of the kitchen, and absolute authority there, in respect of the entertainment, are rather epicures in constant quest of delicacies, than hungry parasites, who submit to any indignity for the sake of a meal. Lazarillo’s whole intrigue consists of schemes for being invited to dine where there was an umbrana’s head, and we are told that

—— “He hath a courtly kind of hunger,

And doth hunt more for novelty than plenty;”

and Justice Greedy’s delight is placed in rich canary, a larded pheasant, or a red deer baked in puff paste. Mosca, in Ben Jonson’s Volpone, who grasps at presents made to him by the legacy-hunters of his patron, and who at length attempts to defraud the patron himself, is a parasite of infinitely greater artifice and villainy than any of those in Plautus; and in the opinion of the late editor of Jonson, outweighs the aggregate merit of all Plautus’s parasites. Colax, who, in the Muses’ Looking-Glass of Randolph, chimes in with the sentiments of each character, approving, by an immense variety of subtle arguments, every extreme of vice and folly, appears to flatter all those allegorical representations of the passions exhibited in this drama, rather from courtesy than want. He tells us, indeed, that

“’Tis gold gives Flattery all her eloquence;”

but this part of his character is not brought prominently forward, nor is he represented as a glutton or epicure. Perhaps the character which comes nearest to the parasite of the Captivi is in a play not very generally known, the Canterbury Guests, by Ravenscroft.

But although it might be difficult to find a precise copy in modern times of the parasite of the Captivi, its principal plot has been repeatedly imitated, particularly in an old English drama, The Case is altered, supposed to have been written by Ben Jonson, and published in some editions of his works. Count Ferneze, a nobleman of Vicenza, and who corresponds to Hegio, lost a son called Camillo, when Vicenza was taken by the French. His other son, Paulo, is afterwards made prisoner by the same enemies. Chamont, the French general, and Camillo Ferneze, who, under the name of Gaspar, had entered into the French service, are taken prisoners by the Italians; and while in captivity they agree to change names, and apparent situations. Camillo, who passes for Chamont, is carefully retained in confinement at Vicenza, while that general is despatched by the Count Ferneze to procure the ransom of his son Paulo. The Count having subsequently detected the imposture, Camillo is put in fetters and ordered for execution. Chamont, however, returns with Paulo, whom he had now redeemed, and the Count afterwards discovers, by means of a tablet hanging round his neck, that the youth Camillo, whom he was treating with such severity, was the son whom he had lost during the sack of Vicenza.

The Captivi is also the foundation of Les Captifs, a comedy of Rotrou, where a father, afflicted by the captivity of a son, purchases all the slaves exposed to sale in Ætolia, in the hope of recovering his child. The interest and vivacity of the play, which is one of the best of its author, are supported by the pleasantries of a parasite, and a variety of ingenious incidents. Ginguené has mentioned, in the Histoire Litteraire d’Italie, that the Captivi must also have suggested the Suppositi, a comedy by the author of the Orlando Furioso. Ariosto, however, has made the incidents of the Captivi subservient to a love intrigue, and not to the deliverance of a prisoner. Whilst Erostrato, a young gentleman, acts the part of a domestic in the house of his mistress’s father, his servant, Dulippo, personates his master, and studies in his place at the university of Ferrara. At the conclusion of the piece, Dulippo is discovered to be the son of an old and rich doctor of laws, who was the rival in love of Erostrato. There is a parasite in this play as in the Captivi, but the character of the doctor is new, and the scenes chiefly consist of the schemes which are laid by the master and servant to disappoint his views as to the lady of whom Erostrato is enamoured.

Casina. This play is so called from the name of a female slave, on whom, though she does not once appear on the stage, the whole plot of the drama hinges. It is said in the prologue to have been translated from Diphilus, a Greek writer of the new comedy, by whom it was called Κληρουμενοι, the Lot Drawers. Diphilus was a contemporary of Menander; he was distinguished by his comic wit and humour and occasionally by the moral sententious character of his dramas, of which he is said to have written a hundred, and from which larger fragments have been preserved than from any Greek plays belonging to the new comedy. Notwithstanding what is said in the Delphine Plautus, it is evident from its terms, that the prologue could not have been prefixed by the dramatist himself, but must have been written a good many years after his death, on occasion of a revival of the Casina. It would appear from it that the plays of Plautus had rather gone out of fashion immediately after his death; but the public at length, tired with the new comedies, began to call for the reproduction of those of Plautus—

“Nam, nunc novæ quæ prodeunt comœdiæ,

Multo sunt nequiores, quam nummi novi,

Nos postquam rumores populi intelleximus,

Studiose expetere vos Plautinas fabulas,

Antiquam ejus edimus comœdiam.”

From the same prologue it would seem that this play, when first represented, had surpassed in popularity all the dramatic productions of the time—

“Hæc quum primùm acta est, vicit omnes fabulas.”

It cannot, indeed, be denied, that, in the Casina, the unities of time and place are rigidly observed, and, in point of humour, it is generally accounted inferior to none of Plautus’s dramas. The nature, however, of the subject, will admit only of a very slight sketch. The female slave, who gives name to the comedy, is beloved by her master, Stalino, and by his son, Euthynicus,—the former of whom employs Olympio, his bailiff in the country, and the latter his armour-bearer, Chalinus, to marry Casina, each being in hopes, by this contrivance, to obtain possession of the object of his affections. Cleostrata, Stalino’s wife, suspecting her husband’s designs, supports the interests of her son, and, after much dispute, it is settled, that the claims of the bailiff and armour-bearer should be decided by lot. Fortune having declared in favour of the former, Stalino obtains the loan of a neighbour’s house for the occasion, and it is arranged, that its mistress should be invited for one evening by Cleostrata; but the jealous lady counteracts this plan by declining the honour of the visit. At length all concur in making a dupe of the old man. Chalinus is dressed up in wedding garments to personate Casina, and the play concludes with the mortification of Stalino, at finding he had been imposed on by a counterfeit bride.

The plan here adopted by Stalino for securing possession of Casina, is nearly the same with that pursued by the Count Almaviva, in Beaumarchais’ prose comedy, Le Marriage de Figaro; where the Count, with similar intentions, plans a marriage between Suzanne and his valet-de-chambre, Figaro, but has his best-laid schemes invariably frustrated. The concluding part of the Casina has probably, also, suggested the whole of the Marescalco, a comedy of the celebrated Aretine, which turns on the projected nuptials of the character who gives name to the piece, and whose supposed bride is discovered, during the performance of the marriage ceremony, to be a page of the Duke of Mantua, dressed up in wedding garments, in a frolic of the Duke’s courtiers, in order to impose on the Marescalco. Those scenes in the Ragazzo of Lodovico Dolce, where a similar deception is practised and where Giacchetto, the disguised youth, minutely details the event of the trick of which he was made the chief instrument, [pg 126]have also been evidently drawn from the same productive origin.[247]

The closest imitation, however, of the Casina, is Machiavel’s comedy Clitia. Many of its scenes, indeed, have been literally translated from the Latin, and the incidents are altered in very few particulars. The Stalino of Plautus is called Nicomaco, and his wife Sofronia: their son is named Cleandro, and the dependents employed to court Clitia for behoof of their masters, Eustachio and Pirro. The chief difference is, that the young lover, who is supposed to be absent in the Casina, is introduced on the stage by the Italian author, and the object of his affections is a young lady, brought up and educated by his parents, and originally intrusted to their care by one of their friends, which makes the proposal of her marrying either of the servants offered to her choice more absurd than in the Latin original. The bridal garments, too, are not assumed by one of the rival servants, but by a third character, introduced and employed for the purpose. This comedy of Machiavel, his Mandragola, and the renowned tale of Belfegor, were the productions with which that profound politician and historian, who established a school of political philosophy in the Italian seat of the Muses—who applied a fine analysis to the Roman history, and a subtler than Aristotle to the theory of government—attempted, as he himself has so beautifully expressed it,

“Fare il suo tristo tempo piu soave;

Perche altrove non have,

Dove voltare il viso,

Che gli è stato interciso

Mostrar con altre imprese altra virtute.”

Cistellaria, (the Casket.)—The prologue to this play is spoken by the god Auxilium, at the end of the first act. It explains the subject of the piece—compliments the Romans on their power and military glory—and concludes with exhorting them to overcome the Carthaginians, and punish them as they deserve. Hence it is probable, that this play was written during the second Punic war, which terminated in the year 552; and as Plautus was born in the year 525, it may be plausibly conjectured, that the Cistellaria was one of his earliest productions. This also appears from its greater rudeness when compared with his other plays, and from the shortness and simplicity of the plot. But though the argument is trite and sterile, it is enlivened by a good deal of comic [pg 127] humour, particularly in the delineation of some of the subordinate characters. Like many others of Plautus’s plays, it turns on the accidental recognition of a lost child by her parents, in consequence of the discovery of a casket, containing some toys, which had been left with her when exposed, and by means of which she is identified and acknowledged.

In ancient times these recognitions, so frequently exhibited on the stage, were not improbable. The customs of exposing children, and of reducing prisoners of war to slavery—the little connection or intercourse between different countries, from the want of inns or roads—and the consequent difficulty of tracing a lost individual—rendered such incidents, to us apparently so marvellous, of not unusual occurrence in real life. In Greece, particularly, divided as it was into a number of small states, and surrounded by a sea infested with pirates, who carried on a commerce in slaves, free-born children were frequently carried off, and sold in distant countries. By the laws of Athens, marriage with a foreigner was null; or, at least, the progeny of such nuptials were considered as illegitimate, and not entitled to the privileges of Athenian citizens. Hence, the recognition of the supposed stranger was of the utmost importance to herself and lover. In real life, this recognition may have been sometimes actually aided by ornaments and trinkets. Parents frequently tied jewels and rings to the children whom they exposed, in order that such as found them might be encouraged to nourish and educate them, and that they themselves might afterwards be enabled to discover them, if Providence took care for their safety[248]. Plots, accordingly, which hinged on such circumstances, were invented even by the writers of the old Greek comedy. One of the later pieces of Aristophanes, now lost, entitled Cocalus, is said to have presented a recognition; and nearly the same sort of intrigue was afterwards employed by Menander, and, from his example, by Plautus and Terence. From imitation of the Greek and Latin comedies, similar incidents became common both in dramatic and romantic fiction. The pastoral romance of Longus hinges on a recognition of this species; and those elegant productions, in which the Italians have introduced the characters and occupations of rural life into the drama, are frequently founded on the exposure of children, who, after being brought up as shepherds by reputed fathers, are recognised by their real parents, from ornaments or tokens fastened to their persons when abandoned in infancy or childhood.

The Cistellaria has been more directly imitated in Gli Incantesimi of Giovam-Maria Cecchi, a Florentine dramatist of the sixteenth century. That part, however, of the plot which gives name to the piece, has been invented by the Italian author himself.

Curculio.—The subject of this play, turns on a recognition similar to that which occurs in the Cistellaria. It derives its title from the name of a parasite, who performs the part usually assigned by Plautus to an intriguing slave; and he is called Curculio, from a species of worm which eats through corn.

It is worthy of observation, that in the fourth act of this play, the Choragus, who was master of the Chorus, and stage-manager, or leader of the band, is introduced, expressing his fear lest he should be deprived of the clothes he had lent to Curculio, and addressing to the spectators a number of satirical remarks on Roman manners.

Vossius has noticed the inadvertency or ignorance of Plautus in this drama, where, though the scene is laid in Epidaurus, he sends the parasite to Caria, and brings him back in four days. This part of the comedy he therefore thinks has been invented by Plautus himself, since a Greek poet, to whom the geography of these districts must have been better known, would not have carried the parasite to so great a distance in so short a period.

Epidicus.—This play is so called from the name of a slave who sustains a principal character in the comedy, and on whose rogueries most of the incidents depend. Its most serious part consists in the discovery of a damsel, who proves to be sister to a young man by whom she has been purchased as a slave. The play has no prologue; but, at the beginning, a character is introduced, which the ancients called persona protatica,—that is, a person who enters only once, and at the commencement of the piece, for the sake of unfolding the argument, and does not appear again in any part of the drama. Such are Sosia, in the Andria of Terence, and Davus, in his Phormio. This is accounted rather an inartificial mode of informing the audience of the circumstances previous to the opening of the piece. It is generally too evident, that the narrative is made merely for the sake of the spectators; as there seldom appears a sufficient reason for one of the parties being so communicative to the other. Such explanations should come round, as it were, by accident, or be drawn involuntarily from the characters themselves in the course of the action.

The Epidicus is said to have been a principal favourite of [pg 129]the author himself; and, indeed, one of the characters in his Bacchides exclaims,

“Etiam Epidicum, quam ego fabulam æque ac me ipsum amo.”

But, though popular in the ancient theatre, the Epidicus does not appear to be one of the plays of Plautus which has been most frequently imitated on the modern stage. There was, however, a very early Italian imitation of it in the Emilia, a comedy of Luigi da Groto, better known by the appellation of Cieco D’Adria, one of the earliest romantic poets of his country. The trick, too, of Epidicus, in persuading his master to buy a slave with whom his son was in love, has suggested the first device fallen on by Mascarelle, the valet in Moliere’s Etourdi, in order to place the female slave Celie at the disposal of her lover, by inducing his master to purchase her.

Menæchmi—hinges on something of the same species of humour as the Amphitryon—a doubt and confusion with regard to the identity of individuals. According to the Delphin Plautus, it was taken from a lost play of Menander, entitled Διδυμοι; but other commentators have thought, that it was more probably derived from Epicharmus, or some other Sicilian dramatist.

In this play, a merchant of Syracuse had two sons, possessing so strong a personal resemblance to each other, that they could not be distinguished even by their parents. One of these children, called Menæchmus, was lost by his father in a crowd on the streets of Syracuse, and, being found by a Greek merchant, was carried by him to Epidamnum, (Dyracchium,) and adopted as his son. Meanwhile the brother, (whose name, in consequence of this loss, had been changed to Menæchmus,) having grown up, had set out from Syracuse in quest of his relative. After a long search he arrived at Epidamnum, where his brother had by this time married, and had also succeeded to the merchant’s fortune. The amusement of the piece hinges on the citizens of Epidamnum mistaking the Syracusan stranger for his brother, and the family of the Epidamnian brother falling into a corresponding error. In this comedy we have also the everlasting parasite; and the first act opens with a preparation for an entertainment, which Menæchmus of Epidamnum had ordered for his mistress Erotium, and to which the parasite was invited. The Syracusan happening to pass, is asked to come in by his brother’s mistress, and partakes with her of the feast. He also receives from her, in order to bear it to the embroiderer’s, a robe which his brother had carried off from his wife, with the view of presenting it to this [pg 130]mistress. Afterwards he is attacked by his brother’s jealous wife, and her father; and, as his answers to their reproaches convince them that he is deranged, they send straightway for a physician. The Syracusan escapes; but they soon afterwards lay hold of the Epidamnian, in order to carry him to the physician’s house, when the servant of the Syracusan, who mistakes him for his master, rescues him from their hands. The Epidamnian then goes to his mistress with the view of persuading her to return the robe to his wife. At length the whole is unravelled by the two Menæchmi meeting; when the servant of the Syracusan, surprised at their resemblance, discovers, after a few questions to each, that Menæchmus of Epidamnum is the twin-brother of whom his master had been so long in search, and who now agrees to return with them to Syracuse.

The great number of those Latin plays, where the merriment consists in mistakes arising from personal resemblances, must be attributed to the use of masks, which gave probability to such dramas; and yet, if the resemblance was too perfect, the humour, I think, must have lost its effect, as the spectators would not readily perceive the error that was committed.

No play has been so repeatedly imitated as the Menæchmi on the modern stage, particularly the Italian, where masks were also frequently employed. The most celebrated Italian imitation of the Menæchmi is Lo Ipocrito of Aretine, where the twin-brothers, Liseo and Brizio, had the same singular degree of resemblance as the Menæchmi. Brizio had been carried off a prisoner in early youth during the sack of Milan, and returns to that city, after a long absence, in the first act of the play, in quest of his relations. Liseo’s servants, and his parasite, Lo Ipocrito, all mistake Brizio for their patron, and his wife takes him to share an entertainment prepared at her husband’s house, and also intrusts him with the charge of some ornaments belonging to her daughter; while, on the other hand, Brizio’s servant mistakes Liseo for his master. The interest of the play arises from the same sort of confusion as that which occurs in the Menæchmi; and from the continual astonishment of those who are deceived by the resemblance, at finding an individual deny a conversation which they were persuaded he had held a few minutes before. The play is otherwise excessively involved, in consequence of the introduction of the amours and nuptials of the five daughters of Liseo. The plot of the Latin comedy has also been followed in Le Moglie of Cecchi, and in the Lucidi of Agnuolo Firenzuola; but the incidents have been, in a great measure, adapted by these dramatists to the manners of their native country. [pg 131]Trissino, in his Simillimi, has made little change on his original, except adding a chorus of sailors; as, indeed, he has himself acknowledged, in his dedication to the cardinal, Alessandro Farnese. In Gli due Gemelli, which was long a favourite piece on the Italian stage, Carlini acted both brothers; the scenes being so contrived that they were never brought on the stage together—in the same manner as in our farce of Three and the Deuce, where the idea of giving different characters and manners to the three brothers, with a perfect personal resemblance, by creating still greater astonishment in their friends and acquaintances, seems an agreeable addition.

The Menæchmi was translated into English towards the end of the sixteenth century, by William Warner, the author of Albion’s England. This version, which was first printed in 1595, and is entitled, “Menæchmi, a pleasaunt and fine conceited comedy, taken out of the most excellent wittie poet Plautus, chosen purposely, as least harmefull, yet most delightful,” was unquestionably the origin of Shakspeare’s Comedy of Errors. The resemblance of the two Antipholis’, and the other circumstances which give rise to the intrigue, are nearly the same as in Plautus. Some of the mistakes, too, which occur on the arrival of Antipholis of Syracuse at Ephesus, have been suggested by the Latin play. Thus, the Syracusan, on coming to Ephesus, dines with his brother’s wife. This lady had under repair, at the goldsmith’s, a valuable chain, which her husband resolves to present to his mistress, but the goldsmith gives it to the Syracusan. At length the Ephesian is believed insane by his friends, who bring Doctor Pinch, a conjurer, to exorcise him. Shakspeare has added the characters of the twin Dromios, the servants of the Antipholis’s, who have the same singular resemblance to each other as their masters, which has produced such intricacy of plot that it is hardly possible to unravel the incidents.

The Comedy of Errors is accounted one of the earliest, and is certainly one of the least happy efforts of Shakspeare’s genius. I cannot agree with M. Schlegel, in thinking it better than the Menæchmi of Plautus, or even than the best modern imitation of that comedy—Les Menechmes, ou Les Jumeaux, of the French poet Regnard, which is, at least, a more lively and agreeable imitation. All the scenes, however, have been accommodated to French manners; and the plot differs considerably from that of Plautus, being partly formed on an old French play of the same title, by Rotrou, which appeared as early as 1636. One chief distinction is, that the Chevalier Menechme knows of the arrival of his brother from [pg 132]the country, and knows that he had come to Paris in order to receive an inheritance bequeathed to him by his uncle, as also to marry a young lady of whom the Chevalier was enamoured. The Chevalier avails himself of the resemblance to prosecute his love-suit with the lady, and to receive the legacy from the hands of an attorney, while his brother is in the meantime harassed by women to whom the Chevalier had formerly paid addresses, and is arrested for his debts. It was natural enough, as in Plautus, that an infant, stolen and carried to a remote country, should have transmitted no account of himself to his family, and should have been believed by them to be dead; but this can with difficulty be supposed of Regnard’s Chevalier, who had not left his paternal home in Brittany till the usual age for entering on military service, and had ever since resided chiefly at Paris. The Chevalier finds, from letters delivered to him by mistake, that his brother had come to town to receive payment of a legacy recently bequeathed to him: But, unless it was left to any one who bore the name of Menechme, it is not easy to see how the attorney charged with the payment, should have allowed himself to be duped by the Chevalier. Nor is it likely that, suspicious as the elder Menechme is represented, he should trust so much to his brother’s valet, or allow himself to be terrified in the public street and open day into payment of a hundred louis d’or. It is equally improbable that Araminte should give up the Chevalier to her niece, or that the elder Menechme should marry the old maid merely to get back half the sum of which his brother had defrauded him. That all the adventures, besides, should terminate to the advantage of the Chevalier, has too much an air of contrivance, and takes away that hazard which ought to animate pieces of this description, and which excites the interest in Plautus, where the incidents prove fortunate or unfavourable indiscriminately to the two brothers.

In Plautus, the robe which Menæchmus of Epidamnum carries off from his wife, suffices for almost the whole intrigue. It alone brings into play the falsehood and avarice of the courtezan, the inclination of both the Menæchmi for pleasure, the gluttony of the parasite, and rage of the jealous wife: But in the French Menechmes,—trunks, letters, a portrait, promises of marriage, and presents, are heaped on each other, to produce accumulated mistakes. Regnard has also introduced an agreeable variety, by discriminating the characters of the brothers, between whom Plautus and Shakspeare have scarcely drawn a shade of difference. The Chevalier is a polished gentleman—very ingenious; but, I think, not very honest: His brother is blunt, testy, and impatient, [pg 133]and not very wise. The difference, indeed, in their language and manners, is so very marked, that it seems hardly possible, whatever might be the personal resemblance, that the Chevalier’s mistress could have been deceived. These peculiarities of disposition, however, render the mistakes, and the country brother’s impatience under them, doubly entertaining—

“Faudra-t-il que toujours je sois dans l’embarras

De voir une furie attachée a mes pas?”

And when assailed by Araminte, the old maid to whom his brother had promised marriage—

“Esprit, demon, lutin, ombre, femme, ou furie,

Qui que tu sois, enfin laisse moi, je te prie.”

When his brother is at last discovered, and indubitably recognized, he exclaims,

“Mon frere en verité—Je m’en rejouis fort,

Mais j’avais cependant compté sur votre mort.”

Boursault’s comedy, Les Menteurs qui ne mentent point, though somewhat different in its fable from the Latin Menæchmi, is founded on precisely the same species of humour—the exact resemblance of the two Nicandres occasioning ludicrous mistakes and misunderstandings among their valets and mistresses.

The most recent French imitation of the play of Plautus is the Menechmes Grecs, by Cailhava, in which the plot is still more like the Latin comedy than the Menechmes of Regnard; but the characters are new. This piece has been extremely popular on the modern French stage.—“Le public,” says Chenier, “s’est empressé de rendre justice a la peinture piquante de mœurs de la Grece, a la verité des situations, au naturel du dialogue, au merite rare d’une gaité franche, qui ne degenere pas en bouffonnerie[249].”

Miles Gloriosus, (the Braggart Captain.) This was a character of the new Greek comedy, introduced and brought to perfection by Philemon and Menander. These dramatists wrote during the reigns of the immediate successors of Alexander the Great. At that period, his generals who had established sovereignties in Syria and Egypt, were in the practice of recruiting their armies by levying mercenaries in Greece. The soldiers who had thus served in the wars of the Seleucidæ and Ptolemies, were in the habit, when they re[pg 134]turned home to Greece after their campaigns, of astonishing their friends with fabulous relations of their exploits in distant countries. Having been engaged in wars with which Athens had no immediate concern or interest, these partizans met with little respect or sympathy from their countrymen, and their lies and bravadoes having made them detested in Athenian society[250], they became the prototypes of that dramatic character of which the constant attributes were the most absurd vanity, stupidity, profusion, and cowardice. This overcharged character, along with that of the slave and parasite, were transferred into the dramas of Plautus, the faithful mirrors of the new Greek comedy. The first act of the Miles Gloriosus has little to do with the plot: It only serves to acquaint us with the character of the Captain Pyrgopolinices; and it is for this purpose alone that Plautus has introduced the parasite, who does not return to the stage after the first scene. The boasts of this captain are quite extravagant, but they are not so gross as the flatteries of the parasite: indeed it is not to be conceived that any one could swallow such compliments as that he had broken an elephant’s thigh with his fist, and slaughtered seven thousand men in one day, or that he should not have perceived the sarcasms of the parasite intermixed with his fulsome flattery. Previous, however, to the invention of gunpowder, more could be performed in war by the personal prowess of individuals, than can be now accomplished; and hence the character of the braggart captain may not have appeared quite so exaggerated to the ancients as it seems to us. One man of peculiar strength and intrepidity often carried dismay into the hostile squadrons, as Goliah defied all the armies of Israel, and, with a big look, and a few arrogant words, struck so great a terror, that the host fled before him.

Most European nations being imbued with military habits and manners for many centuries after their first rise, the part of a boasting coward was one of the broadest, and most obviously humorous characters, that could be presented to the spectators. Accordingly, the braggart Captain, though he has at length disappeared, was one of the most notorious personages on the early Italian, French, and English stage.

Tinca, the braggart Captain in La Talanta, a comedy by Aretine, is a close copy of Thraso, the soldier in Terence, the play being taken from the Eunuchus, where Thraso is a chief character. But Spampana, the principal figure in the Farsa Satira Morale, a dramatic piece of the fifteenth century, by [pg 135]Venturino of Pesaro, was the original and genuine Capitano Glorioso, a character well known, and long distinguished in the Italian drama. He was generally equipped with a mantle and long rapier; and his personal qualities nearly resembled those of the Count di Culagna, the hero of Tassoni’s mock heroic poem La Secchia Rapita:—

“Quest’ era un Cavalier bravo e galante,

Ch’era fuor de perigli un Sacripante.

Ma ne perigli un pezzo di polmone:

Spesso ammazzato avea qualche gigante,

E si scopriva poi, ch’era un cappone.”

This military poltroon long kept possession of the Italian stage, under the appellations of Capitan Spavento and Spezzafer, till about the middle of the sixteenth century, when he yielded his place to the Capitano Spagnuolo, whose business was to utter Spanish rodomontades, to kick out the native Italian Captain in compliment to the Spaniards, and then quietly accept of a drubbing from Harlequin. When the Spaniards had entirely lost their influence in Italy, the Capitan Spagnuolo retreated from the stage, and was succeeded by that eternal poltroon, Scaramuccio, a character which was invented by Tiberio Fiurilli, the companion of the boyhood of Louis XIV[251].

In imitation of the Italian captain, the early French dramatists introduced a personage, who patiently received blows while talking of dethroning emperors and distributing crowns. The part was first exhibited in Le Brave, by Baif, acted in 1567; but there is no character which comes so near to the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, as that of Chasteaufort in Cyrano Bergerac’s Pedant Joué. In general, the French captains have more rodomontade and solemnity, with less buffoonery, than their Italian prototypes. The captain Matamore, in Corneille’s Illusion Comique, actually addresses the following lines to his valet:—

“II est vrai que je rêve, et ne saurois resoudre,

Lequel des deux je dois le premier mettre en poudre,

Du grand Sophi de Perse, ou bien du grand Mogol.”

And again—

“Le seul bruit de mon nom renverse les murailles,

Defait les escadrons, et gagne les batailles;

D’un seul commandement que je fais aux trois Parques,

Je depeuple l’état des plus heureux monarques.”

Corneille’s Matamore also resembles the Miles Gloriosus, in his self-complacency on the subject of personal beauty, and his belief that every woman is in love with him. Pyrgopolinices declares—

“Miserum esse pulchrum hominem nimis.”

And in like manner, Matamore—

“Ciel qui sais comme quoi j’en suis persecuté.

Un peu plus de repos avec moins de beaute.

Fais qu’un si long mepris enfin la desabuse.”

Scarron, who was nearly contemporary with Corneille, painted this character in Don Gaspard de Padille, the Fanfaron, as he is called, of the comedy Jodelet Duelliste. Gaspard, however, is not a very important or prominent character of the piece. Jodelet himself, the valet of Don Felix, seems intended as a burlesque or caricature of all the braggarts who had preceded him. Having received a blow, he is ever vowing vengeance against the author of the injury in his absence, but on his appearance, suddenly becomes tame and submissive.

The braggart captains of the old English theatre have much greater merit than the utterers of these nonsensical rhapsodies of the French stage. Falstaff has been often considered as a combination of the characters of the parasite and Miles Gloriosus; but he has infinitely more wit than either; and the liberty of fiction in which he indulges, is perhaps scarcely more than is necessary for its display. His cheerfulness and humour are of the most characteristic and captivating sort, and instead of suffering that contumely with which the parasite and Miles Gloriosus are loaded, laughter and approbation attend his greatest excesses. His boasting speeches are chiefly humorous; jest and merriment account for most of them, and palliate them all. It is only subsequent to the robbery that he discovers the traits of a Miles Gloriosus. Most of the ancient braggarts bluster and boast of distant wars, beyond the reach of knowledge or evidence—of exploits performed in Persia and Armenia—of storms and stratagems—of falling pell-mell on a whole army, and putting thousands to the sword, till, by some open and apparent fact, they are brought to shame as cowards and liars; but Falstaff’s boasts refer to recent occurrences, and he always preserves himself from degradation by the address with which he defies detection, and extricates himself from every difficulty. His character, however, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, has some affinity to the captains of the Roman stage, from his being [pg 137]constantly played on in consequence of his persuasion that women are in love with him. The swaggering Pistol in King Henry IV., is chiefly characterized by his inflated language, and is, as Doll calls him, merely “a fustian rascal.” Bessus, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s King and No King, is said by Theobald to be a copy of Falstaff; but he has little or none of his humour. Bessus was an abusive wretch, and so much contemned, that no one called his words in question; but, afterwards, while flying in battle, having accidentally rushed on the enemy, he acquired a reputation for valour; and being now challenged to combat by those whom he had formerly traduced, his great aim is to avoid fighting, and yet to preserve, by boasting, his new character for courage. However fine the scene between Bessus and Arbaces, at the conclusion of the third act, the darker and more infamous shades of character there portrayed ought not to have been delineated, as our contemptuous laughter is converted, during the rest of the play, or, on a second perusal, into detestation and horror. Bobadil, in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour, has generally been regarded as a copy of the Miles Gloriosus; but the late editor of Jonson thinks him a creation sui generis, and perfectly original. “The soldiers of the Roman stage,” he continues, “have not many traits in common with Bobadil. Pyrgopolinices, and other captains with hard names, are usually wealthy—all of them keep mistresses, and some of them parasites—but Bobadil is poor. They are profligate and luxurious—but Bobadil is stained with no inordinate vice, and is so frugal, that a bunch of radishes, and a pipe to close the orifice of his stomach, satisfy all his wants. Add to this, that the vanity of the ancient soldier is accompanied with such deplorable stupidity, that all temptation to mirth is taken away, whereas Bobadil is really amusing. His gravity, which is of the most inflexible nature, contrasts admirably with the situations into which he is thrown; and though beaten, baffled, and disgraced, he never so far forgets himself as to aid in his own discomfiture. He has no soliloquies, like Bessus and Parolles, to betray his real character, and expose himself to unnecessary contempt: nor does he break through the decorum of the scene in a single instance. He is also an admirer of poetry, and seems to have a pretty taste for criticism, though his reading does not appear very extensive; and his decisions are usually made with somewhat too much promptitude. In a word, Bobadil has many distinguishing traits, and, till a preceding braggart shall be discovered, with something more than big words and beating, to characterize him, it may not be amiss to allow Jonson the [pg 138]credit of having depended on his own resources.” The character of the braggart captain was continued in the Bernardo of Shadwell’s Amorous Bigot, and Nol Bluff, in Congreve’s Old Bachelor. These are persons who apparently would destroy every thing with fire and sword; but their mischief is only in their words, and they “will not swagger with a Barbary hen, if her feathers turn back with any show of resistance.” The braggarts, indeed, of modern dramatists, have been universally represented as cowardly, from Spampana down to Captain Flash. But cowardice is not a striking attribute of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, at least it is not made the principal source of ridicule as with the moderns. We have instead, a vain conceit of his person, and his conviction that every woman is in love with him.

This feature in the character of the Miles Gloriosus, produces a principal part in the intrigue of this amusing drama, which properly commences at the second act, and is said, in a prologue there introduced, to have been taken from the Greek play Αλαζων. While residing at Athens, the captain had purchased from her mother a young girl, (whose lover was at that time absent on an embassy,) and had brought her with him to his house at Ephesus. The lover’s slave entered into the captain’s service, and, seeing the girl in his possession, wrote to his former master, who, on learning the fate of his mistress, repaired to Ephesus. There he went to reside with Periplectomenes, a merry old bachelor, who had been a friend of his father, and now agreed to assist him in recovering the object of his affections. The house of Periplectomenes being immediately adjacent to that of the captain, the ingenious slave dug an opening between them; and the keeper, who had been intrusted by the captain with charge of the damsel, was thus easily persuaded by her rapid, and to him unaccountable, transition from one building to the other, that it was a twin sister, possessing an extraordinary resemblance to her, who had arrived at the house of Periplectomenes. Afterwards, by a new contrivance, a courtezan is employed to pretend that she is the wife of Periplectomenes, and to persuade the captain that she is in love with him. To facilitate this amour, he allows the girl, whom he had purchased at Athens, to depart with her twin sister and her lover, who had assumed the character of the master of the vessel in which she sailed. The captain afterwards goes to the house of Periplectomenes to a supposed assignation, where he is seized and beat, but does not discover how completely he had been duped, till the Athenian girl had got clear off with her lover.

This play must, in the representation, have been one of the [pg 139]most amusing of its author’s productions. The scenes are full of action and bustle, while the secret communication between the two houses occasions many lively incidents, and forms an excellent jeu de theatre.

With regard to the characters, the one which gives title to the play is, as already mentioned, quite extravagant; and no modern reader can enjoy the rodomontade of the Miles Gloriosus, or his credulity in listening with satisfaction to such monstrous tales of his military renown and amorous success. Flattery for potential qualities may be swallowed to any extent, and a vain man may wish that others should be persuaded that he had performed actions of which he is incapable; but no man can himself hearken with pleasure to falsehoods which he knows to be such, and which in the recital are not intended to impose upon others. Pleusides, the lover in this drama, is totally insipid and uninteresting, and we are not impressed with a very favourable opinion of his mistress from the account which is given of her near the beginning of the play:—

“Os habet, linguam, perfidiam, malitiam, atque audaciam,

Confidentiam, confirmitatem, fraudolentiam:

Qui arguet se, eum contra vincat jurejurando suo.

Domi habet animum falsiloquum, falsificum, falsijurium.”

The principal character, the one which is best supported, and which is indeed sustained with considerable humour, is that of Periplectomenes, who is an agreeable old man, distinguished by his frankness, jovial disposition, and abhorrence of matrimony. There is one part of his conduct, however, which I wish had been omitted, as it savours too much of cunning, and reminds us too strongly of Ben Jonson’s Volpone. Talking of his friends and relations, he says—

—— “Me ad se, ad prandium, ad cœnam vocant.

Ille miserrimum se retur, minimum qui misit mihi.

Illi inter se certant donis; ego hæc mecum mussito:

Bona mea inhiant: certatim dona mittunt et munera.”

I have often thought that the character of Durazzo, in Massinger’s Guardian, was formed on that of Periplectomenes. Like him, Durazzo is a jovial old bachelor, who aids his nephew Caldoro in his amour with Calista. When the lover in Plautus apologizes to his friend for having engaged him in an enterprize so unsuitable to his years, he replies—

“Quid ais tu? itane tibi ego videor oppido Acheronticus,

Tam capularis; tamne tibi diu vita vivere?

Nam equidem haud sum annos natus præter quinquaginta et quatuor,

Clare oculis video, pernix sum manibus, sum pedes mobilis.”

In like manner Durazzo exclaims—

“My age! do not use

That word again; if you do, I shall grow young,

And swinge you soundly. I would have you know,

Though I write fifty odd, I do not carry

An almanack in my bones to predeclare

What weather we shall have; nor do I kneel

In adoration at the spring, and fall

Before my doctor.” ——

Periplectomenes boasts of his convivial talents, as also of his amorous disposition, and his excellence at various exercises—

“Et ego amoris aliquantum habeo, humorisque meo etiam in corpore:

Nequedum exarui ex amœnis rebus et voluptariis.

* * * *

Tum ad saltandum non Cinædus magis usquam saltat quam ego.”

This may be compared with the boast of Durazzo—

“Bring me to a fence school,

And crack a blade or two for exercise;

Ride a barbed horse, or take a leap after me,

Following my hounds or hawks, and, (by your leave,)

At a gamesome mistress, you shall confess

I’m in the May of my abilities.”

It may be perhaps considered as a confirmation of the above conjecture concerning Massinger’s imitation of Plautus, that the cook in the Guardian is called Cario, which is also the name of the cook of Periplectomenes.

There is, however, a coincidence connected with this drama of Plautus, which is much more curious and striking than its resemblance to the Guardian of Massinger. The plot of the Miles Gloriosus is nearly the same with the story of the Two Dreams related in the Seven Wise Masters, a work originally written by an Indian philosopher, long before the Christian æra, and which, having been translated into Greek under the title of Syntipas, became current during the dark ages through all the countries of Europe, by the different names of Dolopatos, Erastus, and Seven Wise Masters,—the frame remaining substantially the same, but the stories being frequently adapted to the manners of different nations. In this popular story-book the tale of the Two Dreams concerns a knight, and a lady who was constantly confined by a jealous husband, in a tower almost inaccessible. Having become mutually enamoured, in consequence of seeing each other in dreams, the knight repaired to the residence of the husband, by whom he was hospitably received, and was at length allowed to build a habitation on his possessions, at no great distance from the [pg 141]castle in which his wife was inclosed. When the building was completed, the knight secretly dug a communication under ground, between his new dwelling and the tower, by which means he enjoyed frequent and uninterrupted interviews with the object of his passion. At length the husband was invited to an entertainment prepared at the knight’s residence, at which his wife was present, and presided in the character of the knight’s mistress. During the banquet the husband could not help suspecting that she was his wife, and in consequence he repaired, after the feast was over, to the tower, where he found her sitting composedly in her usual dress. This, and his confidence in the security of the tower, the keys of which he constantly kept in his pocket, dispelled his suspicions, and convinced him that the Beauty who had done the honours of the knight’s table, had merely a striking resemblance to his own lovely consort. Being thus gradually accustomed to meet her at such entertainments, he at last complied with his friend’s request, and kindly assisted at the ceremony of the knight’s marriage with his leman. After their union, he complacently attended them to the harbour, and handed the lady to the vessel which the knight had prepared for the elopement. This story also coincides with Le Chevalier a la Trappe, one of the Fabliaux of the Norman Trouveurs[252], with a tale in the fourth part of the Italian Novellino of Massuccio Salernitano, and with the adventures of the Vieux Calender, in Gueulette’s Contes Tartares.

Mercator—is one of the plays for which Plautus was indebted to Philemon, the contemporary and the successful rival of Menander, over whom he usually triumphed by the theatrical suffrages, while contending for the prize of comedy. The Roman critics unanimously concur in representing these popular decisions as unjust and partial. But Quintilian, while he condemns the perverted judgment of those who preferred Philemon to Menander, acknowledges that he must be universally admitted to have merited the next place to his great rival.—“Qui ut pravis sui temporis judiciis Menandro sæpe prælatus est, ita consensu tamen omnium meruit credi secundus[253].”

An interesting account of Philemon is given in the Observer, by Cumberland, who has also collected the strange and inconsistent stories concerning the manner of his death. He is represented to us as having been a man of amiable character, and cheerful disposition, seldom agitated by those furious passions which distracted the mind of Menander. He lived [pg 142]to the extraordinary age of a hundred and one, during which long period he wrote ninety comedies. Of these, the critics and grammarians have preserved some fragments, which are generally of a tender and sentimental, sometimes even of a plaintive cast. Apuleius, however, informs us, that Philemon was distinguished for the happiest strokes of wit and humour, for the ingenious disposition of his plots, for his striking and well managed discoveries, and the admirable adaptation of his characters to their situations in life[254]. To judge by the Latin Mercator, imitated or translated from the Εμπορος of Philemon, it is impossible not to consider him as inferior to those other Greek dramatists from whom Plautus borrowed his Amphitryon, Aulularia, Casina, and Miles Gloriosus; yet it must be recollected, that those are the best comedies which suffer most by a transfusion into another language. The English Hypocrites and Misers would indeed be feeble records of the genius of Moliere. Of one point, however, we may clearly judge, even through the mist of translation. Notwithstanding what is said by Apuleius concerning the purity of Philemon’s dramas, in none of the plays of Plautus is greater moral turpitude represented. A son is sent abroad by his father, with the view of reclaiming him from the dissolute course of life which he had followed. The youth, however, is so little amended by his travels, that he brings a mistress home in the ship with him. The father, seeing the girl, falls in love with her. His son, in order to conceal his passion, proposes to sell its object, but engages one of his acquaintances to purchase her for him. By some mismanagement, she is bought by a friend whom the father had employed for this purpose, and is carried, as had been previously arranged, to the purchaser’s house. The friend’s wife, however, being jealous of this inmate, her husband is obliged to explain matters for her satisfaction, and the old debauchee, in consequence, incurs, before the conclusion of the comedy, merited shame and reproach.

An old libertine may be a very fit subject for satire and ridicule, but in this play there is certainly too much latitude allowed to the debaucheries of youth. The whole moral of the drama is contained in three lines near the conclusion:—

“Neu quisquam posthac prohibeto adolescentem filium

Quin amet, et scortum ducat; quod bono fiat modo:

Si quis prohibuerit, plus perdet clam, quam si præhibuerit palam.”

Nothing can be more ridiculous than the delays and trifling of the persons in this piece, under circumstances which must naturally have excited their utmost impatience. Examples of this occur in the scene which occupies nearly the whole of the first act, between Charinus and his slave Acanthio, and the equally tedious dialogue in the fifth act between Eutychus and Charinus.

The Mercator of Plautus is the origin of La Stiava, an Italian comedy by Cecchi; and in the second scene of the second act, there are two lines which have a remarkable resemblance to the conclusion of the celebrated speech of Jaques, “All the world’s a stage,” in As you Like it.

“Senex cum extemplo est jam nec sentit, nec sapit.

Aiunt solere eum rursum repuerascere.”

Mostellaria,—which the English translator of Plautus has rendered the Apparition,—represents a young Athenian, naturally of a virtuous disposition, who, during the absence of his father on a trading voyage, is led into every sort of vice and extravagance, partly by his inordinate love for a courtezan, and partly by the evil counsels of one of his slaves, called Tranio. During an entertainment, which the youth is one day giving in his father’s mansion, he is suddenly alarmed by the accounts which Tranio brings, of the unexpected return of the old man, whom he had just seen landing near the harbour. At the same time, however, the slave undertakes to prevent his entering the house. In prosecution of this design he there locks up his young master and his guests, and, on the approach of the old gentleman, gravely informs him that the house was now shut up, in consequence of being haunted by the apparition of an unfortunate man, long since murdered in it by the person from whom it had been last purchased. Tranio has scarcely prevailed on the father to leave the door of the dwelling, when they unluckily meet a money-lender, who had come to crave payment of a large debt from the profligate son; but the ingenious slave persuades the father, that the money had been borrowed to pay for a house which was a great bargain, and which his son had bought in place of that which was haunted. A new dilemma, however, arises, from the old gentleman’s asking to see the house: Tranio artfully obtains leave from the owner, who being obliged to go to the Forum, nothing is said on this occasion with regard to the sale. He examines the house a second time along with the owner, but Tranio had previously begged him, as from motives of delicacy, to say nothing concerning his purchase; and [pg 144]the whole passes as a visit, to what is called a Show-house. The old man highly approves of the bargain; but at length the whole deception is discovered, by his accidentally meeting an attendant of one of his son’s companions, who is just going into the haunted house to conduct his master home from that scene of festivity. He has thus occasion to exercise all his patience and clemency in forgiveness of the son by whom he has been almost ruined, and of the slave by whom he had been so completely duped.

In this play, the character of the young man might have been rendered 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 [pg 145]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 [pg 146]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. [pg 147]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, [pg 148]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 [pg 149]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 com[pg 150]position 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 [pg 151]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 [pg 152]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, [pg 153]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.” ——

Arcturus having thus satisfactorily accounted for his knowledge of the incidents of the drama, proceeds to unfold the situation of the principal characters. Dæmones, before whose house in Cyrene the scene is laid, had formerly resided at Athens, where his infant daughter had been kidnapped, and had been afterwards purchased by a slave merchant, who brought her to Cyrene. A Greek youth, then living in that town, had become enamoured of her, and having agreed to purchase her, the merchant had consented to meet him and fulfil the bargain at an adjacent temple. But being afterwards persuaded that he could procure a higher price for her in Sicily, the slave-dealer secretly hired a vessel, and set sail, carrying the girl along with him. The ship had scarcely got out to sea when it was overtaken by a dreadful tempest over which Arcturus is figured as presiding. The play opens during the storm, in a manner eminently beautiful and romantic—an excellence which none of the other plays of Plautus possess. Dæmones and his servant are represented as viewing the tempest from land, and pointing out to each other the dangers and various vicissitudes of a boat, in which were seated two damsels who had escaped from the ship, and were trying to gain the shore, which, after many perils, they at length reached. The decorations of this scene are said to have been splendid, and disposed in a very picturesque manner. Madame Dacier conjectures, “that at the farther end of the stage was a prospect of the sea, intersected by many rocks and cliffs, which projected considerably forward on the stage. On one side the city of Cyrene was represented as at a distance; on the other, the temple of Venus, with a court before it, in the centre of which stood an altar. Adjacent to the temple, and on the same side, was the house of Dæmones, with some scattered cottages in the back ground.” Pleusidippus, the lover, comes forward to the temple during the storm, and then goes off in search of Labrax, the slave-merchant, who had likewise escaped from the shipwreck. The damsels, whose situation is highly interesting, having now got on shore, appear among the cliffs, and after having deplored their misfortunes, they are received into the temple by the [pg 154]priestess of Venus, who reminds them, however, that they should have come clothed in white garments and bringing victims! Here they are discovered by the slave of Pleusidippus, who goes to inform his master. Labrax then approaches to the vicinity of the temple of Venus, and having discovered that the damsels who had saved themselves from the wreck were secreted there, he rushes in to claim and seize them. Thus far the play is lively and well conducted, but the subsequent scenes are too long protracted. They are full of trifling, and are more loaded than those of any other comedy of Plautus, with quaint conceits, the quibbling witticisms, and the scurrilities of slaves. The scene in which Labrax attempts to seize the damsels at the altar, and Dæmones protects them, is insufferably tedious, but terminates at length with the pander being dragged to prison. After this, the fisherman of Dæmones is introduced, congratulating himself on having found a wallet which had been lost from the pander’s ship, and contained his money, as well as some effects belonging to the damsels. The ridiculous schemes which he proposes, and the future grandeur he anticipates in consequence of his good fortune, is an excellent satire on the fantastic projects of those who are elevated with a sudden success. Having been observed, however, by the servant of Pleusidippus, who suspected that this wallet contained articles by which Palæstra might discover her parents, a long contest for its possession ensues between them, which might be amusing in the representation, but is excessively tiresome in perusal. This may be also remarked of the scene where their dispute is referred to the arbitration of Dæmones, who apparently is chosen umpire for no other reason than because this was necessary to unravel the plot. Dæmones discovers, from the contents of the wallet, that Palæstra is his daughter. The principal interest being thus exhausted, the remaining scenes become more and more tedious. We feel no great sympathy with the disappointment of the fisherman, and take little amusement in the bargain which he drives with the pander for the restoration of the gold, or his stipulation with his master for a reward, on account of the important service he had been instrumental in rendering him.

This play has been imitated by Ludovico Dolce, in his comedy Il Ruffiano, which was published in 1560, and which, the author says in his prologue, was “vestita di habito antico, e ridrizzato alla forma moderna.” The Ruffiano is not a mere translation from the Latin: the language and names are altered, and the scenes frequently transposed. There is likewise introduced the additional character of the old man Lucretio, [pg 155]father to the lover; also his lying valet Tagliacozzo, and his jealous wife Simona. Lucretio comes from Venice to the town where the scene of the play is laid, to recover a son who had left home in quest of a girl in the possession of Secco the Ruffiano. The first act is occupied with the details of Lucretio’s family misfortunes, and it is only in the commencement of the second act that the shipwreck and escape of the damsels are introduced, so that the play opens in a way by no means so interesting and picturesque as the Rudens of Plautus. The women having taken refuge in a church, Lucretio offers them shelter in his own house, which exposes them to the rage of his jealous wife Simona. By the assistance, however, of one of these girls, he discovers his lost son, who was her lover; and the recognition of the damsel herself as daughter of Isidoro, who corresponds to the Dæmones of Plautus, is then brought about in the same manner as in the Latin original, and gives rise to the same tedious and selfish disputes among the inferior characters. Madame Riccoboni has also employed the Rudens in her comedy Le Naufrage.

Stichus—is so called from a slave, who is a principal character in the comedy. The subject is the continued determination of two ladies to persist in their constancy to their husbands, who, from their long absence, without having been heard of, were generally supposed to be dead. In this resolution they remain firm, in spite of the urgency of their fathers to make them enter into second marriages, till at length their conjugal fidelity is rewarded by the safe arrival of their consorts. It would appear that Plautus had not found this subject sufficient to form a complete play; he has accordingly filled up the comic part of the drama with the carousal of Stichus and his fellow slaves, and the stratagems of the parasite Gelasimus, in order to be invited to the entertainments which the husbands prepared in honour of their return.

Trinummus—is taken from the Thesaurus of Philemon; but Plautus has changed the original title into Trinummus—a jocular name given to himself by one of the characters hired to carry on a deception, for which he had received three pieces of money, as his reward. The prologue is spoken by two allegorical personages, Luxury, and her daughter Want, the latter of whom had been commissioned by her mother to take up her residence in the house of the prodigal youth Lesbonicus. The play is then opened by a Protatick person, as he is called, who comes to chide his friend Callicles for behaviour which appeared to him in some points incomprehensible; in consequence of which the person accused explains his conduct at once to the spectators and his angry monitor. It seems Char[pg 156]mides, an Athenian, being obliged to leave his own country on business of importance, intrusted the guardianship of his son and daughter to his friend Callicles. He had also confided to him the management of his affairs, particularly the care of a treasure which was secreted in a concealed part of his dwelling. Lesbonicus, the son of Charmides, being a dissolute youth, had put up the family mansion to sale, and his guardian, in order that the treasure entrusted to him might not pass into other hands, had purchased the house at a low price. Meanwhile a young man, called Lysiteles, had fallen in love with the daughter of Charmides, and obtained the consent of her brother to his marriage. Her guardian was desirous to give her a portion from the treasure, but does not wish to reveal the secret to her extravagant brother. The person calling himself Trinummus is therefore hired to pretend that he had come as a messenger from the father—to present a forged letter to the son and to feign that he had brought home money for the daughter’s portion. While Trinummus is making towards the house, to commence performance of his part, Charmides arrives unexpectedly from abroad, and seeing this Counterfeit approaching his house, immediately accosts him. A highly comic scene ensues, in which the hireling talks of his intimacy with Charmides, and also of being entrusted with his letters and money; and when Charmides at length discovers himself, he treats him as an impostor. The entrance of Charmides into his house is the simple solution of this plot, of which the nodus is neither very difficult nor ingenious. This meagre subject is filled up with an amicable contest between Lesbonicus and his sister’s lover, concerning her portion,—the latter generously offering to take her without dowry, and the former refusing to give her away on such ignominious terms.

The English translators of Plautus have remarked, that the art of the dramatist in the conduct of this comedy is much to be admired:—“The opening of it,” they observe, “is highly interesting; the incidents naturally arise from each other, and the whole concludes happily with the reformation of Lesbonicus, and the marriage of Lysiteles. It abounds with excellent moral reflections, and the same may be said of it with equal justice as of the Captives:—

‘Ad pudicos mores facta est hæc fabula.’ ”

On the other hand, none of Plautus’ plays is more loaded with improbabilities of that description into which he most readily falls. Thus Stasimus, the slave of Lesbonicus, in order to save a farm which his master proposed giving as a portion to [pg 157]his sister, persuades the lover’s father that a descent to Acheron opened from its surface,—that the cattle which fed on it fell sick,—and that the owners themselves, after a short period, invariably died or hanged themselves. In order to introduce the scene between Charmides and the Counterfeit, the former, though just returned from a sea voyage and a long absence, waits in the street, on the appearance of a stranger, merely from curiosity to know his business; and in the following scene the slave Stasimus, after expressing the utmost terror for the lash on account of his tarrying so long, still loiters to propound a series of moral maxims, inconsistent with his character and situation.

The plot of the Dowry of Giovam-maria Cecchi is precisely the same with that of the Trinummus; but that dramatist possessed a wonderful art of giving an air of originality to his closest imitations, by the happy adaptation of ancient subjects to Italian manners. The Tresor Caché of Destouches is almost translated from the Trinummus, only he has brought forward on the stage Hortense, the Prodigal’s sister, and has added the character of Julie, the daughter of the absent father’s friend, of whom the Prodigal himself is enamoured. In this comedy the character of the two youths are meant to be contrasted, and are more strongly brought out in the imitation, from both of them being in love. A German play, entitled Schatz, by the celebrated dramatist Lessing, is also borrowed from this Latin original. The scene, too, in Trinummus, between Charmides and the counterfeit messenger, has given rise to one in the Suppositi of Ariosto, and through that medium to another in Shakspeare’s Taming of the Shrew, where, when it is found necessary for the success of Lucentio’s stratagem at Padua, that some one should personate his father, the pedant is employed for this purpose. Meanwhile, the father himself unexpectedly arrives at Padua, and a comical scene in consequence passes between them.

Truculentus—is so called from a morose and clownish servant, who, having accompanied his master from the country to Rome, inveighs against the depraved morals of that city, and especially against Phronesium, the courtezan by whom his master had been enticed. His churlish disposition, however, is only exhibited in a single scene. On the sole other occasion on which he is introduced, he is represented as having become quite mild and affable. For this change no reason is assigned, but it is doubtless meant to be understood that he had meanwhile been soothed and wheedled by the arts of some courtezan. The characters, however, of the Truculentus and his rustic master, have little to do with the main plot of the drama, [pg 158]which is chiefly occupied with the fate of the lovers, whom Phronesium enticed to their ruin. When she had consumed the wealth of the infatuated Dinarchus, she lays her snares for Stratophanes, the Babylonian captain, to whom she pretends to have borne a son, in order that she may prey on him with more facility. This drama is accordingly occupied with her feigned pregnancy, her counterfeited solicitude, and her search for a supposititious child, to which she persuades her dupe that she had given birth, but which afterwards proves to be the child of her former lover Dinarchus, by a young lady to whom he had been betrothed.

In the first act of this play an account is given of the mysteries of a courtezan’s occupation, which, with a passage near the commencement of the Mostellaria, and a few fragments of Alexis, a writer of the middle comedy, gives us some insight into the practices by which they entrapped and seduced, their lovers, by whom they appear to have been maintained in prodigious state and splendour. In a play of Terence, one of the characters, talking of the train of a courtezan, says,

“Ducitur familia tota,

Vestispicæ, unctor, auri custos, flabelliferæ, sandaligerulæ,

Cantrices, cistellatrices, nuncii, renuncii[265].”

The Greek courtezan possessed attainments, which the more virtuous of her sex were neither expected nor permitted to acquire. On her the education which was denied to a spotless woman, was carefully bestowed. To sing, to dance, to play on the lyre and the lute, were accomplishments in which the courtezan was, from her earliest years, completely instructed. The habits of private life afforded ample opportunity for the display of such acquirements, as the charm of convivial meetings among the Greeks was thought imperfect, unless the enjoyments were brightened by a display of the talents which belonged exclusively to the Wanton. But though these refinements alone were sufficient to excite the highest admiration of the Greek youth, unaccustomed as they were to female society, and often procured a splendid establishment for the accomplished courtezan, some of that class embraced a much wider range of education; and having added to their attainments in the fine arts, a knowledge of philosophy and the powers of eloquence, they became, thus trained and educated, the companions of orators, statesmen, and poets. The arrival of Aspasia at Athens is said to have produced a change in the manners of that city, and to have formed a new and remark[pg 159]able epoch in the history of society. The class to which she belonged was of more political importance in Athens than in any other state of Greece; and though I scarcely believe that the Peloponnesian war had its origin in the wrongs of Aspasia, the Athenian courtezans, with their various interests, were often alluded to in grave political harangues, and they were considered as part of the establishment of the state. Above all, the comic poets were devoted to their charms, were conversant with their manners, and often experienced their rapacity and infidelity; for, being unable to support them in their habits of expense, an opulent old man, or dissolute youth, was in consequence frequently preferred. The passion of Menander for Glycerium is well known, and Diphilus, from whom Plautus borrowed his Rudens, consorted with Gnathena, celebrated as one of the most lively and luxurious of Athenian Charmers[266]. Accordingly, many of the plays of the new comedy derive their names from celebrated courtezans; but it does not appear, from the fragments which remain, that they were generally represented in a favourable light, or in their meridian splendour of beauty and accomplishments[267]. In the Latin plays, the courtezans are not drawn so highly gifted in point of talents, or even beauty, as might be expected; but it was necessary to paint them as elegant, fascinating, and expensive, in order to account for the infatuation and ruin of their lovers. The Greeks and Romans were alike strangers to the polite gallantry of Modern Europe, and to the enthusiastic love which chivalry is said to have inspired in the middle ages. Thus their hearts and senses were left unprotected, to become the prey of such women as the Phronesium of the Truculentus, who is a picture of the most rapacious and debauched of her class, and whose vices are neither repented of, nor receive punishment, at the conclusion of the drama. Dinarchus may be regarded as a representation of the most profligate of the Greek or Roman youth, yet he is not held up to any particular censure; and, in the end, he is neither reformed nor adequately punished. The portion, indeed, of the lady whom he had violated, and at last agrees to espouse, is threatened by her father to be diminished, but this seems merely said in a momentary fit of resentment.

This play, with all its imperfections, is said to have been a great favourite of the author[268]; and was a very popular comedy at Rome. It has descended to us rather in a mutilated state, which may, perhaps, have deprived us of some fine sen[pg 160]tences or witticisms, which the ancients had admired; for, as a French translator of Plautus has remarked, their approbation could scarcely have been founded on the interest of the subject, the disposition of the incidents, or the moral which is inculcated.

The character of Lolpoop, the servant of Belfond Senior, in Shadwell’s Squire of Alsatia, has been evidently formed on that of the Truculentus, in this comedy. His part, however, as in the original, is chiefly episodical; and the principal plot, as shall be afterwards shown, has been founded on the Adelphi of Terence.

The above-mentioned plays are the twenty dramas of Plautus, which are still extant. But, besides these, a number of comedies, now lost, have been attributed to him. Aulus Gellius[269] mentions, that there were about a hundred and thirty plays, which, in his age, passed under the name of Plautus; and of these, nearly forty titles, with a few scattered fragments, still remain. From the time of Varro to that of Aulus Gellius, it seems to have been a subject of considerable discussion what plays were genuine; and it appears, that the best informed critics had come to the conclusion, that a great proportion of those comedies, which vulgarly passed for the productions of Plautus, were spurious. Such a vast number were probably ascribed to him, from his being the head and founder of a great dramatic school; so that those pieces, which he had perhaps merely retouched, came to be wholly attributed to his pen. As in the schools of painting, so in the dramatic art, a celebrated master may have disciples who adopt his principles. He may give the plan which they fill up, or complete what they have imperfectly executed. Many paintings passed under the name of Raphael, of which Julio Romano, and others, were the chief artists. “There is no doubt,” says Aulus Gellius, “but that those plays, which seem not to have been written by Plautus, but are ascribed to him, were by certain ancient poets, and afterwards retouched and polished by him[270].” Even those comedies which were written in the same taste with his, came to be termed Fabulæ Plautinæ, in the same way as we still speak of Æsopian fable, and Homeric verse. “Plautus quidem,” says Macrobius, “ea re clarus fuit, ut post mortem ejus, comœdiæ, quæ incertæ ferebantur, Plautinæ tamen esse, de jocorum copia, agnoscerentur[271].” It is thus evident, that a sufficient number of jests stamped a dramatic piece as the production of Plautus in the [pg 161]opinion of the multitude. But Gellius farther mentions, that there was a certain writer of comedies, whose name was Plautius, and whose plays having the inscription “Plauti,” were considered as by Plautus, and were named Plautinæ from Plautus, though in fact they ought to have been called Plautianæ from Plautius. All this sufficiently accounts for the vast number of plays ascribed to Plautus, and which the most learned and intelligent critics have greatly restricted. They have differed, however, very widely, as to the number which they have admitted to be genuine. Some, says Servius, maintain, that Plautus wrote twenty-one comedies, others forty, others a hundred[272]. Gellius informs us, that Lucius Ælius, a most learned man, was of opinion that not more than twenty-five were of his composition[273]. Varro wrote a work, entitled Quæstiones Plautinæ, a considerable portion of which was devoted to a discussion concerning the authenticity of the plays commonly assigned to Plautus, and the result of his investigation was, that twenty-one were unquestionably to be admitted as genuine. These were subsequently termed Varronian, in consequence of having been separated by Varro from the remainder, as no way doubtful, and universally allowed to be by Plautus. The twenty-one Varronian plays are the twenty still extant, and the Vidularia. This comedy appears to have been originally subjoined to the Palatine MS. of the still existing plays of Plautus, but to have been torn off, since, at the conclusion of the Truculentus, we find the words “Vidularia incipit[274]:” And Mai has recently published some fragments of it, which he found in an Ambrosian MS. Such, it would appear, had been the high authority of Varro, that only those plays, which had received his indubitable sanction, were transcribed in the MSS. as the genuine works of Plautus; yet it would seem that Varro himself had, on some occasion, assented to the authenticity of several others, induced by their style of humour corresponding to that of Plautus. He had somewhere mentioned, that the Saturio (the Glutton,) and the Addictus, (the Adjudged,) were written by Plautus during the period in which he laboured as a slave at the hand-mill. He was also of opinion, that the Bœotia was by Plautus; and Aulus Gellius concurs with him in this[275], citing certain verses delivered by a hungry parasite, which, he says, are perfectly Plautinian, and must satisfy [pg 162]every person to whom Plautus is familiar, of the authenticity of that drama. From this very passage, Osannus derives an argument unfavourable to the authenticity of the play. The parasite exclaims against the person who first distinguished hours, and set up the sun-dials, of which the town was so full. Now, Osannus maintains, that there were no sun-dials at Rome in the time of Plautus, and that the day was not then distributed into hours, but into much larger portions of time[276]. The Nervolaria was one of the disputed plays in the time of Au. Gellius; and also the Fretum, which Gellius thinks the most genuine of all[277]. Varro, in the first Book of his Quæstiones Plautinæ gives the following words of Attius, which, I presume, are quoted from his work on poetry and poets, entitled Didascalica. “For neither were the Gemini, the Leones, the Condalium, the Anus Plauti, the Bis Compressa, the Bœotia, or the Commorientes, by Plautus, but by M. Aquilius.” It appears, however, from the prologue to the Adelphi of Terence, that the Commorientes was written by Plautus, having been taken by him from a Greek comedy of Diphilus[278]. In opposition to the above passage of Attius, and to his own opinion expressed in the Quæstiones Plautinæ, Varro, in his treatise on the Latin Language, frequently cites, as the works of Plautus, the plays enumerated by Attius, and various others; but this was probably in deference to common opinion, or in agreement with ordinary language, and was not intended to contradict what he had elsewhere delivered, or to stamp with the character of authenticity productions, which he had more deliberately pronounced to be spurious[279].

From the review which has now been given of the comedies of Plautus, something may have been gathered of their general scope and tenor. In each plot there is sufficient action, movement, and spirit. The incidents never flag, but rapidly accelerate the catastrophe. Yet, if we regard his plays in the mass, there is a considerable, and perhaps too great, uniformity in their fables. They hinge, for the most part, on the love of some dissolute youth for a courtezan, his employment of a slave to defraud a father of a sum sufficient to supply his expensive pleasures, and the final discovery that his mistress is a free-born citizen. The charge against [pg 163]Plautus of uniformity in his characters, as well as in his fables, has been echoed without much consideration. The portraits of Plautus, it must be remembered, were drawn or copied at a time when the division of labour and progress of refinement had not yet given existence to those various descriptions of professions and artists—the doctor, author, attorney—in short, all those characters, whose habits, singularities, and whims, have supplied the modern Thalia with such diversified materials, and whose contrasts give to each other such relief, that no caricature is required in any individual representation. The characters of Alcmena, Euclio, and Periplectomenes, are sufficiently novel, and are not repeated in any of the other dramas; but there is ample range and variety even in those which he has most frequently employed—the avaricious old man—the debauched young fellow—the knavish slave—the braggart captain—the rapacious courtezan—the obsequious parasite—and the shameless pander. On most of these parts some observations have been made, while mentioning the different comedies in which they are introduced. The severe father and thoughtless youth, are those in which he has best succeeded, or at least they are those with which we are best pleased. The captain always appears to us exaggerated, and the change which has taken place in society and manners prevents us, perhaps, from entering fully into the characters of the slave, the parasite, and pander; but in the fathers and sons, he has shown his knowledge of our common nature, and delineated them with the truest and liveliest touches. In the former, the struggles of avarice and severity, with paternal affection, are finely wrought up and blended. Even when otherwise respectable characters, they are always represented as disliking their wives, which was not inconsistent with the manners of a Grecian state, in which marriage was merely regarded as a duty; and was a feature naturally enough exhibited on the theatre of a nation, one of whose most illustrious characters declared in the Senate, as a received maxim, that Romans married, not for the sake of domestic happiness, but to rear up soldiers for the republic.

The Latin style of Plautus excels in briskness of dialogue, as well as 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 [pg 164]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, in[pg 165]deed, 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 [pg 166]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 [pg 167]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.