[3] See Wessner, Aemilius Asper. E.g., the refusal of Charinus to win his love by unworthy threats (317), and Pamphilus’ refusal to take credit for a deed which he says a gentleman could not fail to perform (330). It should also be noticed that in the Perinthia Menander had a scene of brutal slave-torturing which Terence took the liberty of eliminating.
[4] Cf. especially Leo, Plaut. Forsch. chap. IV; Legrand, Daos, 490 ff.; Michaut, Plaute, II, 116 ff.; Wilamowitz, Menander, Das Schiedsgericht, 142 ff. A part of this chapter has appeared in the Am. Jour. Phil., 1928, 309.
[5] One may add that if he was more explicit than one would think necessary he was perhaps giving aid to the many strangers that came to the theater in his day.
[6] For other instances see Miles, 238, 381, 767, 904, 1170; Pseud., 725; Casina, 683; Most., 662; Menaechmi, 831; Trin., 1137; cf. Legrand, Daos, 533 ff.
[7] The Merry Wives of Windsor, though it contains no prologue, is fully as explicit in the preparation of every incident—even the two basket-scenes—as any play of Plautus. Indeed most of Shakespeare’s plays give more attention to preparation than is customary on the stage today even though his plots were usually familiar ones. The Romeo and Juliet even has a prologue which goes so far as to disclose the outcome.
[8] The expository dialogue between the two slaves gives the immediate situation so plainly that a Heros would hardly have been employed for the prologue except to reveal the secret hidden to the characters.
[9] In Class. Phil. 1916, 125 ff.; 1917, 405 ff.; 1918, 113 ff.; 1919, 108 ff.
[10] The Epidicus probably once had a prologue (Wheeler, Am. Jour. Phil. 1917, 264). One may suspect that the play in its present form—which requires as patient reading as the Hecyra—was due to a post-Terentian revision. The Mercator has a prologue that does not reveal much of the plot but in the second act the outcome is hinted at by way of a dream. The play as we have it is a revision.
[11] According to Donatus, Menander’s play also contained the marriage, but without objection on the part of Micio. Since in Terence Micio is represented as resisting, the marriage must have been considered as punishment.
[12] The Hecyra according to Donatus was modeled upon a play of Apollodorus, but it is now clear that that play was in turn modeled upon Menander’s Arbitrants. That Terence suppressed the prologue of Apollodorus is apparent from the comment of Donatus (who had a copy of the Greek play at hand) on 1.58: Hoc (the use of protatica prosopa) maluit Terentius quam per prologum narraret argumentum aut θεὸν ἀπὸ μηχανῆς induceret loqui. Since the list of characters and the beginning of Menander’s Arbitrants are lost, there may be some doubt regarding his use of preparation in this play, but since the whole play operates with “dramatic irony” and since Apollodorus had a prologue, it is more than likely that he “prepared” his audience here as elsewhere. At any rate Menander’s audience discover the owner of the finger ring in the second act.