# Plautus and Terence/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.
PLAUTUS.
All the writers of Comedy for the Roman stage, of whose works we have any knowledge, were direct imitators of Menander and his school. Plautus, however, was probably less indebted to him than were his successors, Cæcilius, Lavinius, and Terence. Of the two intermediate authors we know very little; but Plautus and Terence have been more fortunate in securing for themselves a modern audience. Their comedies may not have been really better worth possessing than those of other writers who had their day of popularity: but theirs alone have been preserved, and it is from them that we have to form our judgment of the Comedy of Republican Rome.
Titus Maccius Plautus—the second would be what we should call his surname, and the last simply means "flat-foot" in the dialect of Umbria, the district in ​which he was born,—was a man of humble origin, the son, according to some authorities, of a slave. But little is known with any certainty on these points. He is said to have made money in trade, and to have lost it again; to have then worked as a stage carpenter or machinist, and so perhaps to have acquired his theatrical taste. These early associations are taken also, by some critics, as an explanation of some rudeness and coarseness in his plays; for which, however, the popular taste is quite as likely to have been accountable as any peculiar tendencies of the writer. Like that marvel of dramatic prolificness, Lope de Vega, who quotes him as an apology, Plautus wrote for the people, and might have pleaded, as the Spaniard did, that "it was only fair that the customers should be served with what suited their taste." The masses who thronged the Roman theatres had not the fine intellect of the Commons of Athens. Aristophanes could never have depended upon them for due appreciation of his double-edged jests, or appealed to them as critical judges of humour. The less keen but more polished dialogue and didactic moralising of Menander would have been still less attractive to such an audience as that to which Plautus had to look for favour. The games of the circus—the wild-beast fight and the gladiators, the rope-dancers, the merry-andrews, and the posture-masters,—were more to their taste than clever intrigue and brilliant dialogue.
Plautus—we know him now only by his sobriquet—began his career as a dramatist B.C. 224. He continued to write for the stage, almost without a rival in popularity, until his death, forty years later. How many ​comedies he produced during this long service of the public we do not know: twenty remain bearing his name, all which are considered to be genuine. All, with the exception probably of 'Amphitryon,' are taken from Greek originals. It is not necessary here to give a list of their titles; the most interesting of them will be noticed in their order. With Greek characters, Greek names, and Greek scenery, he gives us undoubtedly the Roman manners of his day, which are illustrated more fully in his pages than in those of the more refined Terence. Let the scene of the drama lie where it will, we are in the streets of Rome all the while. Athenians, Thebans, or Ephesians, his dramatis personæ are all of one country, just as they speak one language; they are no more real Greeks than Shakspeare's Othello is a Moor, or his Proteus a "gentleman of Verona"—except in the bill of the play. So little attempt does he make to keep up anything like an illusion on this point, that he even speaks of "triumvirs" at Thebes, builds a "Capitol" at Epidaurus, and makes his characters talk about "living like those Greeks," and "drinking like Greeks," utterly careless of the fact that they are supposed to be Greeks themselves. He is as independent of such historical and geographical trifles as our own great dramatist when he makes Hector quote Aristotle, or gives a sea-coast to Bohemia. But he has the justification which all great dramatists would fairly plead; that his characters, though distinctly national in colour, are in a wider sense citizens of the world; they speak, in whatever language, the sentiments of civilised mankind.
However coarse in many respects the matter and ​style of Plautus may appear to us, it is certain that good judges amongst those who were more nearly his contemporaries thought very highly of his diction. It was said of him hy Ælius Stolo that "if the Muses ever spoke Latin, it would be the Latin of Plautus." Perhaps he was the first who raised conversational Latin to the dignity of a literary style.
His plays are in most cases introduced by a prologue, spoken sometimes by one of the characters in the play, and sometimes by a mythological personage, such as Silenus or Arcturus. The prologue generally gives an outline of the plot, and this has been objected to by some critics as destroying the interest of the action which is to follow. But a similar practice has been adopted of late years in our own theatres, of giving the audience, in the play-bill, a sketch of the leading scenes and incidents; and this is generally found to increase the intelligent enjoyment of the play itself. The prologues of Plautus frequently also contain familiar appeals on the part of the manager to the audience, and give us a good deal of information as to the materials of which the audience was composed. The mothers are requested to leave their babies at home, for the babies' sakes as well as for the sake of other people; and the children who are in the theatre are begged not to make a noise. The slaves are desired not to occupy the seats, which are not intended for them, but to be content with standing-room; protests are made against the system of claqueurs,—friends of some favourite actor, who gave their applause unfairly, to the discredit of others: and the wives are requested not to interrupt the performance with their chatter, and so annoy their ​husbands who are come to see the play. Remarks of this kind, addressed to the "house," are not confined, however, to the prologue, but occur here and there in the scene itself; these last are evident relics of the earlier days of comedy, for we find no such in the plays of Terence.