Under this head we include such conscious strivings for comic as are frankly and plainly exaggerated and hyper-natural.
a. True burlesque.
This is in effect pure parody, cartooning. Patent burlesque of tragedy appears in Trin. 820 ff. (Charmides returns from abroad.)
"CHAR. To Neptune, ruler of the deep, and puissant brother unto Jove and Nereus, do I in joy and gladness cry my praises and gratefully proclaim my gratitude; and to the briny waves, who held me in their power, yea, even my chattels and my very life, and from their realms restored me to the city of my birth," etc., etc.
To tickle the ears of the groundlings, this must have been delivered in grandiloquent mimicry with all the paraphernalia of the tragic style. Horace notes a kindred manifestation of this tendency (to which he himself is pleasingly addicted), in Ep. II. 3.93 f.:
Interdum tamen et vocem comoedia tollit
Iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore.
Tragic burlesque is again beautifully exemplified in Ps. 702 ff. The versatile Pseudolus after a significant aside: "I'll address the fellow in high-sounding words," says to his master Calidorus:
"Hail! Hail! Thee, thee, O mighty ruler, thee do I beseech who art lord over Pseudolus. Thee do I seek that thou mayst obtain thrice three times triple delights in three various ways, joys earned by three tricks and three tricksters, cunningly won by treachery, fraud and villainy, which in this little sealed missive have I but erstwhile brought to thee....
CHAR. The rascal's spouting like a tragedian."
When Sosia, in the first scene of Amph. (203 ff.), turgidly describes the battle between the Thebans and Teleboans, he is parodying the Messenger of tragedy. Another echo from tragedy is heard at the end of the play, when Jupiter appears in the role of deus ex machina.[116]