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It would be hard to show that there is no true comedy without laughter Terence's Hecyra, for instance but Diderot certainly overlooked what Lessing and most other critics saw so clearly, that laughter rightly stirred is one of the most powerful agencies in directing the moral sympathies of the audience, the very end that Diderot most anxiously sought.
That Terence was in close relations with the Scipionic house cannot, however, be doubted: it is a significant fact, that the first exhibition of the -Adelphi- and the second of the -Hecyra- took place at the funeral games of Lucius Paullus, which were provided by his sons Scipio and Fabius. IV. XI. Token-Money III. XIV. National Comedy
The, apparently, pretty sensitive poet replied in his prologues which properly were not intended for any such purpose with counter-criticisms full of defensive and offensive polemics; and appealed from the multitude, which had twice run off from his -Hecyra- to witness a band of gladiators and rope-dancers, to the cultivated circles of the genteel world.
But the condition of honest women in his day did not permit of the freedom of action and fencing dialectic of a Celimene, and consequently it is below our mark of pure Comedy. Sainte-Beuve conjures up the ghost of Menander, saying: For the love of me love Terence. Of the six comedies of Terence, four are derived from Menander; two, the Hecyra and the Phormio, from Apollodorus.
But the condition of honest women in his day did not permit of the freedom of action and fencing dialectic of a Celimene, and consequently it is below our mark of pure Comedy. Sainte-Beuve conjures up the ghost of Menander, saying: For the love of me love Terence. Of the six comedies of Terence, four are derived from Menander; two, the Hecyra and the Phormio, from Apollodorus.
The, apparently, pretty sensitive poet replied in his prologues which properly were not intended for any such purpose with counter-criticisms full of defensive and offensive polemics; and appealed from the multitude, which had twice run off from his -Hecyra- to witness a band of gladiators and rope-dancers, to the cultivated circles of the genteel world.
That Terence was in close relations with the Scipionic house cannot, however, be doubted: it is a significant fact, that the first exhibition of the -Adelphi- and the second of the -Hecyra- took place at the funeral games of Lucius Paullus, which were provided by his sons Scipio and Fabius. IV. XI. Token-Money III. XIV. National Comedy
His first play was produced in the year that Caecilius died, 166 B.C.; the Hecyra next year; the Hauton Timorumenos in 163; the Eunuchus and Phormio in 161; the Adelphoe in 160; and in the following year the poet died at the age of twenty-six, while sailing round the coast of Greece. The maturity of mind shown by so young a man is very remarkable.
But after reciting a few verses, he was invited to take his place at table, and, having supped with his host, went through the rest to his great delight. This play and five others were received by the public with similar applause, although Volcatius, in his enumeration of them, says that "The Hecyra must not be reckoned among these."
The eulogies of a bachelor life, which are so frequent in Menander, are repeated by his Roman remodeller only with characteristic shyness, whereas the lover in his agony, the tender husband at the -accouchement-, the loving sister by the death-bed in the -Eunuchus- and the -Andria- are very gracefully delineated; in the -Hecyra- there even appears at the close as a delivering angel a virtuous courtesan, likewise a genuine Menandrian figure, which the Roman public, it is true, very properly hissed.
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