Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/247

 Truthfulness to time and place and social character must have been forced upon the Roman playwright by this constant necessity of realising his dramatis personæ in the midst of conditions different from those of the audience to which they spoke. Thus, the use of the Phoenician language by Hanno in the Pœnulus is to be partially explained by this constant contrast which must have produced the desire of realism on a minute scale. In the Indian drama a like effect was produced by similar causes, viz. the use of different languages or dialects by the dramatis personæ, and the introduction of personages in character and language very different from the educated Bráhman. Just as the Plautine comedy—as is proved not only by its Greek names, characters, places, but also by its Greek phrases, words, puns—is addressed to an audience thoroughly familiar with Greek language and life, and by its nature puts the playwright on his guard against untruthful descriptions, so the Indian drama, being addressed, as is expressly stated in the prelude to Málatí and Mádhava, to the Bráhmans, aimed at exact truth of language and character beyond the circle of the sacred caste. Technical Indian writers on the drama, clearly expressing the influences of caste in their conceptions of dramatic propriety, note with care the exact kind of sentiments proper to each character—a propriety which plainly reduces character to what in the East it has commonly been, a type. In Plautus we have also types, side by side with real characters such as Tyndarus in the Captivi; for not only are the leno, meretrix, coquus, sycophanta, parasite, stock characters, but we have such allegorical personages as the Lar