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,