art 1

A Resume of the Criticism and of the Evidence Relating to the Acting
of Plautus

Introduction

This investigation was prompted by the abiding conviction that Plautus as
a dramatic artist has been from time immemorial misunderstood. In his
progress through the ages he has been like a merry clown rollicking
amongst people with a hearty invitation to laughter, and has been rewarded
by commendation for his services to morality and condemnation for his
buffoonery. The majority of Plautine critics have evinced too serious an
attitude of mind in dealing with a comic poet. However portentous and
profound his scholarship, no one deficient in a sense of humor should
venture to approach a comic poet in a spirit of criticism. For criticism
means appreciation.

Furthermore, the various estimates of our poet's worth have been as
diversified as they have been in the main unfair. Alternately lauded as a
master dramatic craftsman and vilified as a scurrilous purveyor of
unsavory humor, he has been buffeted from the top to the bottom of the
dramatic scale. More recent writers have been approaching a saner
evaluation of his true worth, but never, we believe, has his real position
in that dramatic scale been definitely and finally fixed; because
heretofore no attempt has been made at a complete analysis of his
dramatic, particularly his comic, methods. It is the aim of the present
dissertation to accomplish this.

I doubt not that from the inception of our acquaintance with the pages of
Plautus we have all passed through a similar experience. In the beginning
we have been vastly diverted by the quips and cranks and merry wiles of
the knavish slave, the plaints of love-lorn youth, the impotent rage of
the baffled pander, the fruitless growlings of the hungry parasite's
belly. We have been amused, perhaps astonished, on further reading, at
meeting our new-found friends in other plays, clothed in different names
to be sure and supplied in part with a fresh stock of jests, but still
engaged in the frustration of villainous panders, the cheating of harsh
fathers, until all ends with virtue triumphant in the establishment of the
undoubted respectability of a hitherto somewhat dubious female
character.[1]

Our astonishment waxes as we observe further the close correspondence of
dialogue, situation and dramatic machinery. We are bewildered by the
innumerable asides of hidden eavesdroppers, the inevitable recurrence of
soli