Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/1011

Rh it appears that the Andria circulated in manuscript nearly two years before it was acted. For the prologue refers to critical objections to the play, and says that the carpings of a malignant hacknied writer—malevolus vetus poeta—compelled the author to bring forward matters personal to himself, instead of confining himself to the argument of his piece. The Andria is made up of two of Menander's comedies, the Andria and Perinthia, and Luscius Lavinius said that Terence had marred two good plays to make one bad one. Terence replies that if he were a compiler, so were Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius before him, and that he would rather err with them than be right with Lavinius. He ends by warning his assailant not to moot the question of piracy again, since his own offences in that way were notorious, and he begs the audience to give his play a patient hearing, for upon its reception would depend whether he wrote others.

The Roman theatre was ill suited to the representation of the Comoedia Palliata. The bustle and buffoons of Plautus required no better appointment than the wooden booths which that age afforded. The masks and the unities encumbered Menander as well as Terence; but the Roman play-writer had to contend with worse obstacles than the common conventionalities of his art. The manners he pourtrayed [sic] were exotic: his audience was gross and noisy (Prol. in Hecyr., comp. Prol. to B. Jonson's "The Case is altered"); and if Valerius Antias be correct in dating the introduction of the Ludi Scenici in B. C. 193 or 191, the Comoedia Palliata, or Genteel Comedy, was hardly a quarter of a century old at Rome. We find Terence, in his prologues, continually supplicating the spectators to sit still and be silent, and their rudeness and apathy must have formed a singular contrast to his subtle humour and refined pictures of life. Four of his six comedies, indeed, were played at the Megalesia, which were more decorous and orderly than the games of the circus, and are therefore described by Cicero (Harusp. Resp. 12) as maxime casti, sollemnes, religiosi. But at best the comedy of Terence was caviare to the Romans—an Italian opera performed at Bartholomew fair.

The Andrian has been often translated and imitated. The earliest English version was made in the reign of Edward VI. It is in rhymed stanzas of seven lines each, was probably performed as an exercise at one of the universities, and is in some degree adapted to the manners of the times. Baron, the celebrated French actor, imitated Terence closely in his Andrienne. Even the Latin names of the Dramatis Personae are retained, and in the third and fourth acts alone has he deviated, and then not for the better, from his original. The Andria has also suggested a portion of Moore's Foundling. But the most elaborate copy of this play is Sir Richard Steele's Conscious Lovers. The Latin names of the characters, indeed, are not preserved, but their English representatives, as the following list shows, exhibit a close parallelism. Sir John Bevil = Simo; young Bevil = Pamphilus; Indiana = Glycerium; Sealand = Chremes; Myrtle = Charinus; Humphrey = Sosia; Phillis = Mysis; and Tom = Davus, the "currens servus qui fallit senem," the prototype of Molière's Scapin. Steele's underplot is, on the whole, conducted more skilfully than Terence's; but for the management of the principal story, for consistency in the characters, for humour, and elegance of diction, the Conscious Lovers will bear no comparison with the Andrian.

2., "the Step-Mother," was produced at the Megalesian Games, in B. C. 165. It was a version of a play, bearing the same name, by Apollodorus (Meineke, Comic. Graec. Hist. vol. i. p. 464), and is an ancient specimen of the comédie larmoyante. The Hecyra was twice rejected: the first time the spectators hurried out of the theatre to see a boxing match and rope-dancers; the second time, when it was played at the funeral games of Aemilius Paullus, B. C. 160, it was interrupted by a combat of gladiators. It owed its success, on a third trial, to the intercessions of Ambivius Turpio, the manager, with the audience. The Prologue to the Hecyra throws some light on the Roman theatrical system. It appears that the managers of the grex or company, in accepting a new piece, incurred no slight responsibility. Their judgment on the MSS. determined the aediles to purchase or refuse it. But if the public, after all, rejected it, the aediles looked to the manager to indemnify them for the outlay. Ambivius, by his appeals to the spectators, had more than once rescued the plays of Caecilius from rejection, and Terence, in his Prologue to the Phormio, acknowledges his exertions on the third representation of the Hecyra. The cornedy, however, never was a favourite. It was acted quinto loco, fifth on the list, and Volcatius Sedigitus (Gell. xv. 24) pronounces it the worst of the author's plays. The plot, which is single, and which Hurd (Dial. ii.) somewhat magisterially calls "the true Greek plot," was too simple for Roman taste, and the long narrations and general paucity of action in this comedy will alone account for its bad reception. "Tous les genres," says Voltaire, "sont bons, hors le genre ennuyeux." The Hecyra has never been modernised.

3. ," the Self-Tormentor," was performed at the Megalesian Games, B. C. 163. It was borrowed from Menander, and, like the Hecyra, belongs to the Comédie larmoyante. (Comp. Spectator, No. 502.) Its plot is twofold, and the parts are not better connected than the two stories in Vanbrugh's and Cibber's Provoked Husband. From the Prologue it appears that the critics had opened a new battery on Terence; they charged him with being a late learner of his art, and hinted what they afterwards expressed openly (comp. Prol. in Heaut. with Prol. in Adelph.) that his friends helped him in composition. He retorts upon them the grossness and impropriety of their scenes. Ambivius again pleaded the author's cause, and complained of the spectator's preference for such parts as exhausted the actor—the servus currens, the boisterous old man, and the parasite. The observation or neglect of the unities in the Heauton-timoroumenos was the subject of a fierce controversy among the French critics between 1640 and 1655. The principal combatants were Ménage and Hédelin (l'Abbé d'Aubignac); and Madam Dacier acted as moderator. Of the Terentian diction the Self-tormentor is the most perfect example, and the poet seems anxious to veil the anomalies of his plot beneath the dignity of his apophthegms and the splendour of his language. The part of Menedemus, the self-tormentor, rises to almost tragic earnestness, and reminds the reader occasionally