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Updated: May 6, 2025
While the latter had been in the previous period supplanted by the more tasteful but in point of comic vigour far inferior Terence, Roscius and Varro, or in other words the theatre and philology, co-operated to procure for him a resurrection similar to that which Shakespeare experienced at the hands of Garrick and Johnson; but even Plautus had to suffer from the degenerate susceptibility and the impatient haste of an audience spoilt by the short and slovenly farces, so that the managers found themselves compelled to excuse the length of the Plautine comedies and even perhaps to make omissions and alterations.
Plautus is his favorite author, not for the sake of the wit and the vis comica of his comedies, but upon account of the many obsolete words, and the cant of low characters, which are to be met with nowhere else.
Terence and Plautus he praises for furnishing examples of virtue and vice upon the boards, thus to amend the manners of his auditors. He believed that poetry did amend manners, and correct abuses if properly used. But he is very quick to admit the very abuses which Gosson attacked.
Did the Romans require a more forcible style when the long iambic or the trochaic was employed? or is it the weakness of his metrical treatment that Quintilian complains of? Certainly the trochaics of Terence are less clearly marked in their rhythm than those of Ennius or Plautus.
There are pieces, such as the -Trinummus- of Plautus and several of Terence, in which all the characters down to the slaves possess some admixture of virtue; all swarm with honest men who allow deception on their behalf, with maidenly virtue wherever possible, with lovers equally favoured and making love in company; moral commonplaces and well-turned ethical maxims abound.
When two things are compared by quasi ... ita, the indicative verb is nearly always put in the second clause, and may be supplied in the clause with quasi; very rarely are there two different verbs for the two clauses. Cf. however Plautus, Stich. 539 fuit olim, quasi nunc ego sum senex; Lucr. 3, 492 agens animam spumat quasi ... fervescunt undae. SI ... SI: for the more usual si ... sin.
Eorum ille opera ne domum quidem habuit conductitiam Saltem ut esset, quo referret obitum domini servulus. Afranius places him at the head of all the comic writers, declaring, in his Compitalia, Terentio non similem dices quempiam. Terence's equal cannot soon be found. On the other hand, Volcatius reckons him inferior not only to Naevius, Plautus, and Caecilius, but also to Licinius.
The Greek original of both is unknown; but to it, no doubt, rather than to Plautus himself, we are bound to ascribe the credit of the Aulularia and Menaechmi.
His plots, it is true, are like the rest, imitations of Plautus and Terence, or dramatised tales; but, throughout the love- dialogues, on which he seems to have laboured with peculiar fondness, there breathes a tender feeling which rises even from the midst of the rudeness of the old Italian Comedy, and its generally uncongenial materials.
The scorn felt for Shakespeare's "Comedie" and the contrast with this rival specimen of academic dramatics is significant. Out of the comparatively simple plot of Plautus, Shakespeare developed an amusing complexity of situations. These appear upon studying the progress of the story, Act by Act, as follows: ACT I What has the arrest of the "Marchant" Egean to do with the rest of the Story?
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