Apart from the rhetoricians, the most fruitful literary source of our information on gesture is Donatus' commentary on Terence. The trustworthiness of this has been the subject of much argument. Sittl[76] accuses him of speaking merely from the standpoint of a professor of rhetoric, as comedies of Terence were no longer given in the time of Donatus. Weinberger in his "Beitrage zu den Buhnenaltherthumern aus Donats Terenz-commentar,"[77] admonishes us to be very careful not to put too high a value on the commentary. Van Wageningen[78] is of the opinion that much of the work was inspired by Donatus' having seen in his own time unmasked actors play. To this view color is lent by Donatus' note to And. 716: "Sive haec <Mysis> personatis viris agitur, ut apud veteres, sive per mulierem, ut nunc videmus."
If this is true, it makes Donatus' work of more significance to us, as it would imply a harking back to the play of feature of the unmasked performances of Plautus' day. But while it is certain that Donatus had other sources than the Terentian text for his annotations,[79] it is equally certain that practically everything he has to say relative to gesture and stage business is readily to be deduced from the text and is in the main interesting only as a compilation.[80] However, everything he says continues to point persistently to lively gesture and action; and this too in Terentian comedy, where the text makes far less rigorous demands on the actor's muscles than in Plautus' works.
Donatus remarks occasionally that certain words must have been accompanied by especially expressive gesture and byplay, evidently of feature, as vultuose, cum gestu and similar phrases are used to indicate this.[81] His note to And. 722 is: "Haec scaena actuosa est: magis enim in gestu quam in oratione est constituta." Of gestures emphatic and yet not foreign to everyday life Quintilian notes (XI. 3. 123): "Femur ferire--et usitatum et indignantis decet"; a movement plainly employed in Mil. 204 and Truc. 601. But, says Quintilian further (ib.): "Complodere manus scaenicum est et pectus caedere."[82]
One of the notable "hits" of the ancient stage is recorded by Donatus ad Phor. 315: Ambivius (as Phormio) entered "oscitans temulenter atque aurem minimo scalpens digitulo ... et labia lingens ut ebrius et ructans." But Ambivius' potations resulted in an extremely spirited and lifelike imitation of the parasite character and he was forthwith forgiven his drunkenness.
Passing mention must be made of the Terentian Mss. illustrations, though they add but little weight to the foregoing. For a complete list of their sources and editions see Sittl, "Gebärden der Griechen und Römer," Chap. XI, p. 203 ff.[83] But whatever be the exact date of the original, in our extant copies the old traditional gestures are lost and the gesture of everyday life supplied. In fact, in the analyses appended by Leo, van Wageningen and Warnecke, in the works cited above, we arrive at little but that the gestures natural to any Italian-born person in a like situation are reproduced, such as "gestus abeuntis, cogitantis, parasiti," etc. It is almost too much to make any of this a basis for argument as to classical and pre-classical stage-craft. It is at least significant that every character with hands free is gesticulating and the scene from Eun. IV. 6-7 is evidently full of vigorous action.
An old and discursive article[84] by T. Baden, containing a description and analysis of the gestures and posture of a number of familiar figures from comedy exemplified in some collections of statuettes (chiefly those in Borgia's Museum of Baden's time), is open to the same objection as the above. The gestures of slave, pander, parasite, etc., described in the article are lively and expressive to be sure, but contain little to differentiate them from those of daily life.
While much of our evidence is still to come, we believe that we are already justified in the deduction that the actor contemporary with Plautus must have indulged in the extravagances of the players in the Atellan farces and the mimes. The mimus of the Empire, we know, specialized in ridiculous facial contortions.[85]
We must not forget too the vivacity indicated by the comic scenes among the Pompeian and Herculanean wall-paintings,[86] which have a close kinship with the Terentian MSS. pictures. Nor must we lose sight of the fact that all our pictorial reliquiae portray the later masked characters, and hence play of feature, which must have been a notable concomitant of the original Plautine performance, is entirely obscured.
As our intention is fundamentally to get at the original intent of our poet and his actors, a discussion of the mask is not in order. Whether we agree with Donatus' statement that masks were first introduced for comedy and tragedy by Cincius Faliscus and Minucius Prothymus respectively,[87] or with Diomedes' explanation[88] that Roscius adopted them to disguise his pronounced squint, it is certain that they were not worn in Plautus' time, when wigs and make-up were employed for characterization.[89] In fact, the early performances of Plautus, unless we except the original Terentian productions, stand almost alone in the history of Graeco-Roman comedy as unmasked plays. This would give opportunity for the practice of lively grimace and facial play.
The text itself contains not infrequent descriptions of the outward appearance of the characters, often pointing to grotesqueries of make-up that rival those of the Old Comedy. From As. 400-1 we learn that Saurea was: