The philanthropic speeches of Micio have been a constant [pg 195]resource both to the French dramatists and our own, and it would be endless to specify the various imitations of his sentiments. Those of Kno’well, in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour, have a particular resemblance to them. His speech, beginning—
“There is a way of winning more by love[316],”
is evidently formed on the celebrated passage in Terence,—
“Pudore et liberalitate liberos,” &c.
Hecyra—Several of Terence’s plays can hardly be accounted comedies, if by that term be understood, dramas which excite laughter. They are in what the French call the genre serieux, and are perhaps the origin of the comedie larmoyante. The events of human life, for the most part, are neither deeply distressing nor ridiculous; and, in a dramatic representation of such incidents, the action must advance by embarrassments and perplexities, which, though below tragic pathos, are not calculated to excite merriment. Diderot, who seems to have been a great student of the works of Terence, thinks the Hecyra, or Mother-in-law, should be classed among the serious dramas. It exhibits no buffoonery, or tricks of slaves, or ridiculous parasite, or extravagant braggart captain; but contains a beautiful and delightful picture of private life, and those distresses which ruffle “the smooth current of domestic joy.” It was taken from a play of Apollodorus; but, as Donatus informs us, was abridged from the Greek comedy,—many things having been represented in the original, which, in the imitation, are only related. In the Hecyra, a young man, called Pamphilus, had long refused to marry, on account of his attachment to the courtezan Bacchis. He is at length, however, constrained by his father to choose a wife, whose gentleness and modest behaviour soon wean his affections from his mistress. Pamphilus being obliged to leave home for some time, his wife, on pretence of a quarrel with her mother-in-law, quits his father’s house; and Pamphilus, on his return home, finds, that she had given birth to a child, of which he supposed that he could not have been the father. His wife’s mother begs him to conceal her disgrace, which he promises; and affecting extraordinary filial piety, assigns as his reason for not bringing her home, the capricious behaviour of which she had been guilty towards his mother. That lady, in con[pg 196]sequence, offers to retire to the country. Pamphilus is thus reduced to the utmost perplexity; and all plausible excuses for not receiving his wife having failed, his father suspects that he had renewed his intercourse with Bacchis. He, accordingly, sends for that courtezan, who denies the present existence of any correspondence with his son; and, being eager to clear the character as well as to secure the happiness of her former lover, she offers to confirm her testimony before the family of the wife of Pamphilus. During the interview which she in consequence obtains, that lady’s mother perceives on her hand a ring which had once belonged to her daughter, and which Bacchis now acknowledges to have received from Pamphilus, as one which he had taken from a girl whom he had violated, but had never seen. It is thus discovered by Pamphilus, that the lady to whom he had offered this injury before marriage was his own wife, and that he himself was father of the child to whom she had just given birth.
The fable of this play is more simple than that of Terence’s other performances, in all of which he had recourse to the expedient of double plots. This, perhaps, was partly the reason of its want of success on its first and second representations. When first brought forward, in the year 589, it was interrupted by the spectators leaving the theatre, attracted by the superior interest of a boxing-match, and rope-dancers. A combat of gladiators had the like unfortunate effect when it was attempted to be again exhibited, in 594. The celebrated actor, L. Ambivius, encouraged by the success which he had experienced in reviving the condemned plays of Cæcilius, ventured to produce it a third time on the stage[317], when it received a patient hearing, and was frequently repeated. Still, however, most of the old critics and commentators speak of it as greatly inferior to the other plays of Terence. Bishop Hurd, on the contrary, in his notes on Horace, maintains, that it is the only one of his comedies which is written in the true ancient Grecian style; and that, for the genuine beauty of dramatic design, as well as the nice coherence of the fable, it must appear to every reader of true taste, the most masterly and exquisite of the whole collection. Some scenes are doubtless very finely wrought up,—as that between Pamphilus and his mother, after he first suspects the disgrace of his wife, and that in which it is revealed to him by his wife’s mother. The passage in the second scene of the first act, containing the picture of an amiable wife, who has succeeded in effacing from the heart of her husband the love of a dissolute cour[pg 197]tezan, has been highly admired. But, notwithstanding these partial beauties, and the much-applauded simplicity of the plot, there is, I think, great want of skilful management in the conduct of the fable; and if the outline be beautiful, it certainly is not so well filled up as might have been expected from the taste of the author. In the commencement, he introduces the superfluous part of Philotis, (who has no concern in the plot, and never appears afterwards,) merely to listen to the narrative of the circumstances and situation of those who are principal persons in the drama. It is likewise somewhat singular, that Pamphilus, when told by the mother of the injury done to his wife, should not have remembered his own adventure, and thus been led to suspect the real circumstances. This communication, too, ought, as it probably did in the Greek original, to have formed a scene between Pamphilus and his wife’s mother; but, instead of this, Pamphilus is introduced relating to himself the whole discourse which had just passed between them. At length, the issue of the fable is disclosed by another long soliloquy from the courtezan. Indeed, all the plays of Terence abound in soliloquies very inartificially introduced; and there is none of them in which he has so much erred in this way as in the Hecyra. The wife of Pamphilus, too, the character calculated to give most interest, does not appear at all on the stage; and the whole play is consumed in contests between the mother-in-law and the two fathers. The characters of these old men,—the fathers of Pamphilus and his wife,—so far from being contrasted, as in the Adelphi, have scarcely a shade of difference. Both are covetous and passionate; very ready to vent their bad humour on their wives and children, and very ready to exculpate them when blamed by others. The uncommon and delicate situation in which Pamphilus is placed, exhibits him in an interesting and favourable point of view. He wishes to conceal what had occurred, yet is scarcely able to dissemble. Parmeno, the slave of Pamphilus, a lazy inquisitive character, is humorously kept, through the whole course of the play, in continual employment, and total ignorance. Sostrata’s mild character, and the excellent behaviour of Bacchis, show, that in this play, Terence had attempted an innovation, by introducing a good mother-in-law, and an honest courtezan, whose object was to acquire a reputation of not resembling those of her profession. It appears from the Letters of Alciphron and from Athenæus, that there actually was a Greek courtezan of the name of Bacchis, distinguished from others of her class, in the time of Menander, by disinterestedness, and comparative modesty of demeanour. This circumstance, added to the [pg 198]fact of Menander having written a play, entitled Glycerium, (which was the name of his mistress,) leads us to believe that the Greek comedies sometimes represented, not merely the general character of the courtezan, but individuals of that profession; and that probably the Bacchis of Apollodorus, and his imitator Terence, may have been the courtezan of this name, who rejected the splendid offers of the Persian Satrap, to remain the faithful mistress of the poor Meneclides[318].
Phormio—like the last mentioned play, was taken from the Greek of Apollodorus, who called it Epidicazomenos. Terence named it Phormio, from a parasite whose contrivances form the groundwork of the comedy, and who connects its double plot. In this play two brothers had gone abroad, each leaving a son at home, one of whom was called Antipho, and the other Phædria, under care of their servant Geta. Antipho having fallen in love with a woman apparently of mean condition, in order that he might marry her, yet at the same time possess a plausible excuse to his father for his conduct, persuades Phormio to assume the character of her patron. Phormio accordingly brings a suit against Antipho, as her nearest of kin, and he, having made no defence, is ordained in this capacity, according to an Athenian law, to marry the supposed orphan. About the same time, Phædria, the other youth, had become enamoured of a music girl; but he had no money with which to redeem her from the slave merchant. The old men, on their return home, are much disconcerted by the news of Antipho’s marriage, as it had been arranged between them that he should espouse his cousin. Phormio, at the suggestion of Geta, avails himself of this distress, in order to procure money for redeeming Phædria’s music girl. He consents to take Antipho’s wife home to himself, provided he gets a portion with her, which being procured, is immediately laid out in the purchase of Phædria’s mistress. After these plots are accomplished, it is discovered that Antipho’s wife is the daughter of his uncle, by a woman at Lemnos, with whom he had an amour before marriage, and that she had come to Athens during his absence in search of her father. This is found out at the end of the third act, but the play is injudiciously protracted, after the principal interest is exhausted, with the endeavours of the old men to recover the portion which had been given to Phormio, and the dread of Chremes lest the story of his intrigue at Lemnos should come to the knowledge of his wife. The play accordingly languishes after the discovery, notwithstanding all the author’s attempts to [pg 199]support the interest of the piece by the force of pleasantry and humour.
The double plot of this play has been said to be united, by both hingeing on the part of the parasite. But this is not a sufficient union either in tragedy or comedy. I cannot, therefore, agree with Colman, “that the construction of the fable is extremely artful,” or that “it contains a vivacity of intrigue perhaps even superior to that of the Eunuch, particularly in the catastrophe. The diction,” he continues, with more truth, “is pure and elegant, and the first act as chastely written as that of the Self-Tormentor itself. The character of Phormio is finely separated from that of Gnatho, and is better drawn than the part of any parasite in Plautus. Nausistrata is a lively sketch of a shrewish wife, as well as Chremes an excellent draught of a hen-pecked husband, and more in the style of the modern drama than perhaps any character in ancient comedy, except the miser of Plautus. There are also some particular scenes and passages deserving of all commendation, as the description of natural and simple beauty in the person of Fannia, and that in which Geta and Phædria try to inspire some courage into Antipho, overwhelmed by the sudden arrival of his father[319].”
It is curious that this play, which Donatus says is founded on passions almost too high for comedy, should have given rise to the most farcical of all Moliere’s productions, Les Fourberies de Scapin. a celebrated, though at first, an unsuccessful play, where, contrary to his usual practice, he has burlesqued rather than added dignity to the incidents of the original from which he borrowed. The plot, indeed, is but a frame to introduce the various tricks of Scapin, who, after all, is a much less agreeable cheat than Phormio: His deceptions are too palpable, and the old men are incredible fools. As in Terence, there are two fathers, Argante and Geronte, and during the absence of the former, his son Octave falls in love with and marries a girl, whom he had accidentally seen bewailing the death of her mother. At the same time, Leandre, the son of Geronte, becomes enamoured of an Egyptian, and Scapin, the valet of Octave, is employed to excuse to the father the conduct of his son, and to fleece him of as much money as might be necessary to purchase her. The first of these objects could not well be attained by Terence’s contrivance of the law-suit; and it is therefore pretended that he had been forced into the marriage by the lady’s brother, who was a bully, (Spadassin,) and to whom the father agrees to give a large [pg 200]sum of money, that he might consent to the marriage being dissolved. It is then discovered that the girl whom Octave had married is the daughter of Geronte, and the Egyptian is found out, by the usual expedient of a bracelet, to be the long lost child of Argante. Many of the most amusing scenes and incidents are also copied from Terence, as Scapin instructing Octave to regulate his countenance and behaviour on the approach of his father—his enumeration to the father of all the different articles for which the brother of his son’s wife will require money, and the accumulating rage of Argante at each new item. Some scenes, however, have been added, as that where Leandre, thinking Scapin had betrayed him, and desiring him to confess, obtains a catalogue of all the Fourberies he had committed since he entered his service, which is taken from an Italian piece entitled Pantalone, Padre di Famiglia. He has also introduced from the Pedant Joué of Cyrano Bergerac, the device of Scapin for extorting money from Geronte, which consists in pretending that his son, having accidentally gone on board a Turkish galley, had been detained, and would be inevitably carried captive to Algiers, unless instantly ransomed. In this scene, which is the best of the play, the struggle between habitual avarice and parental tenderness, and the constant exclamation, “Que diable alloit il faire dans cette galere du Turc,” are extremely amusing. Boileau has reproached Moliere for having
“Sans honte à Terence allié Tabarin,”