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.