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14 of the piece. A party coming down one street towards the centre of the stage could hold a separate conversation, and be quite out of the sight of another party in the other street, while both were equally visible and audible to the spectators. This will help to explain the stage directions in more than one scene in the comedies of Plautus and Terence. But this limitation of the locality of the scene limited also the range of characters. These were usually supposed to be residents in the neighbourhood, and occupants of some of the houses in the street. Practically, they will be very often found to be members of two neighbouring families, more or less closely connected, whose houses occupied what we should now call the right and left wings of the stage. Occasionally (as in the 'Aulularia' and 'Mostellaria' of Plautus) the scene changes to the inside of one of the houses, or a temple which stands close by; but such scenes are quite exceptional, and in those cases some kind of stage chamber appears to have been swung round by machinery to the front.

For these reasons, perhaps, as well as for others, the principal characters in the repertory of the "New" Comedy are few, and broadly marked. They seem to have occurred over and over again with but little variation in almost every piece. There are the fathers, heads of families, well-to-do burghers, occupying their house in the city, and commonly having a farm in the adjacent country besides, but seldom appearing to have any other particular occupation. Their character is almost always one of two recognised types,—either stern and niggardly, in which case they are duly cheated and baffled by their