12
Foul-jesting mimes always contain the sin of forbidden love, in which constantly a well-dressed adulterer appears and the artful wife fools her stupid husband. These are viewed by the marriageable maiden, the wife, the husband, and the child; even the senate in large part is present.
Ovid, Tristia 2, 495ff
The Roman Theatre
When Menander’s plays were being performed in Athens, the Romans were not yet Italy’s dominant power militarily, let alone culturally. There were indigenous Italian comic traditions, including Atellana (farces featuring masks, improvisation, and stock characters like Bucco, ‘the Fool’, and Maccus, ‘the Clown’), Planipedia (mime) and Togata (‘drama in a toga’, usually a comedy set in Rome), but when Romans began to write their own works they turned to Greek models, especially New Comedy.
Men and women of all walks of life, from slaves to senators, went to the theatre, and the spectators idolized the stars of the stage: the medical writer Galen mentions a female patient suffering from unrequited love for the performer Pylades;1 an affair between a famous actor called Paris and the wife of the emperor Domitian ended when the emperor had him murdered in the street; the comedian Mnester, who had a liaison with Caligula, subsequently began a relationship with Claudius’ wife Messalina – until Claudiushad him executed. Moralists pontificated: ‘Let spectacles and plays that are full of scurrility and of abundant gossip, be forbidden’, wrote Clement of Alexandria.2 The public, however, loved them.
From the mid-third century BCE onwards the Romans started to produce some high quality works of drama. Livius Andronicus, who was possibly a captive Greek, presented a comedy in Rome at the Ludi Romani of 240 BCE, basing his plot and characters on Greek New Comedy. His example was seized upon by an Italian dramatist, Gnaeus Naevius, whose surviving fragments suggest that he, too, usually translated Greek works. Such plays generally preserved the Greek setting, costumes and character names, and so were dubbed fabulae palliatae, ‘plays in a Greek cloak’. There are, however, lots of Latin jokes and Roman allusions, and there is a fundamental divergence from the Greek tradition because the Chorus is completely dispensed with. The Latin plays did, however, still feature lots of singing in the form of cantica. These were delivered with musical accompaniment, as opposed to the unaccompanied diverbia or deverbia, and can have an effect not unlike that of modern rap music, or operatic recitative, depending on the metre used.
The theatre building was adapted from Greek models to fit Roman requirements, but for a long time before it became a major feature of the Roman townscape it was an ad hoc assemblage of booths and staging, and it is in this context that the plays of Plautus and Terence would have been performed. Rome’s first stone theatre was that of Pompey (c.55 BCE), where Julius Caesar was later assassinated.
Their use of arches and concrete allowed Roman architects to make their theatres into free-standing structures. There was no need for them to be built into hillsides (although many were), and the incredibly elaborate substructures, where vaulted passages ran both radially and concentrically under the tiered seating, which was accessed by staircases leading to individual zones, facilitated the movement of huge numbers of spectators both into and out of the auditorium. In essence a Roman theatre is made up of three interconnected elements: the auditorium (cavea); the semicircular orchestra; and the stage. Another feature that really sets the major Roman theatres apart from their Greek predecessors is the scaenae frons, the decorated facade of the building behind the stage thathoused storerooms and the actors’ dressing rooms, and provided an impressive background to the action. Its decoration might include marble facings, mosaics, superimposed tiers of columns, niches, entablatures, pediments and colossal statues. The scaenae fronsrises to the same height as the auditorium, and usually has three doors in it, plus a slanting ceiling that both protected the stage and provided useful acoustic ‘sound reinforcement’. It is joined to the auditorium by lateral returns, so that the interior of the building forms a self-contained unit. In a Roman theatre you are isolated from the outside world.
The cavea usually held thousands of spectators, whose social status was reflected in the seating arrangements. The various sectors of seating were often separated by walls and accessed by different entrances.
The orchestra was semicircular. It was not required for acting or dancing, and restricting it to a semicircle guaranteed a good view, even to spectators at the extreme edges of the cavea.
The stage was generally raised at least 1 m above the level of the orchestra and supported by a low wall called the pulpitum. It usually had a wooden floor, under which machinery for scene changes and special effects could be kept, and it might contain the curtain slot. The curtain was only about 3 m high and it dropped down into the slot at the beginning of the play and rose at the end.
The stage wall very often formed the theatre’s external facade, and many theatres had rows of corbels (projections jutting out from the wall) pierced with holes to support the poles for the velarium (awning), which sheltered the spectators from the sun. With easy access, nice circulation spaces, good sight lines and carefully tuned sounding boards under the seats to act as loudspeakers, all the needs of the audience and the players were well catered for: the Roman theatre was very much fit for its purpose.
Plautus: The Swaggering Soldier
Our information about Plautus (c.254–184 BCE) is sketchy. He came from Sarsina in northern Italy, and may have been an actor before becoming a writer. Plautus is a genuine family name, but it also means ‘flat-footed’, as does planipes, which was the name for an actor in a mime. Furthermore, in various prologues he uses the names Maccus, and either Maccus and/or Maccius Titus. Again, Maccius is a genuine name, but Maccus was a stock clown type in the atellana. Later generations believed he was called Titus Maccius Plautus; he may have been, but Titus Clown Flatfoot would be a fine professional name.
All twenty-one of Plautus’ surviving plays are adaptations of Greek originals. On the whole he tends to stick to the general outline of the plot, to simplify the characters and their emotions, vary his style for comic effect, and aim squarely at broad amusement. Horace accused him of ‘selling out’: ‘He’s keen to pocket the cash; after that, who worries whether the play is a steady success or a hopeless flop?’3 ‘Bums on seats’ was everything to him: if his plays flopped, he starved.
Plautus’ audience particularly liked certain Greek stock characters, and these had their roles greatly extended, especially the servus callidus (ingenious trickster slave), who perpetrates bewilderingly elaborate intrigues, boasts extravagantly about how clever he is, and frequently orders about his despondent master. He delivers lots of cantica, uses lurid insults and Greek slang, and can become the dominant figure in the play. Other roles were also embellished, especially those of the leno (pimp), parasitus (parasite) andmeretrix (prostitute), and there was still an obvious fondness for the ‘running slave’ (servus currens).
Conversely there were certain aspects of the Greek models that Romans found boring, particularly the clichéd happy endings and betrothals. Another modification that Plautus (perhaps) and Terence (certainly) made was the practice of interpolating material from a second Greek original into a play, a practice known as contaminatio.
The comedies are teeming with jokes, which often pander to the simpler tastes of Plautus’ audience: there is a great deal of indecency, mostly sexual, which is often gratuitous and inappropriate to the characters who express it; Plautus deploys a rich colloquial vocabulary, as well as inventing new words; and there are many scenes in which characters insult or threaten one another to a ludicrously exaggerated degree. It is all about instant gratification, getting a laugh. As one scholar aptly said: ‘Plautus made them laugh. And the laughter was Roman’.4 This is entertainment for the Roman stage.
Plautus lived through Hannibal’s invasion of Italy in an age of mercenary soldiers, so his early play The Swaggering Soldier (Miles Gloriosus) is topical. There is a clue to the play’s date when he alludes to a writer with his head supported on a stone block and two warders holding him down. This is Gnaeus Naevius, who famously attacked the powerful Roman family of the Metelli in one of his comedies, and was imprisoned between 206 and 204 BCE.
The play is an adaptation of the Greek Alazon (The Braggart) and is set in Ephesus in front of the adjacent houses of an aged bachelor called Periplectomenus (‘Guardian’) and Pyrgopolynices (‘Tower-Many-Victories’), the stupid, conceited, lustful, boastful soldier of the play’s title. Importantly, though, Pyrgopolynices doesn’t know that Periplectomenus is a bachelor. The drama begins with the soldier bragging about his success on the battlefield and in the bedroom, while his oleaginous parasite Artotrogus eggs him on:
PY: I wonder if you remember … [He seems to be vaguely calculating.]
AR: How many? Yes, a hundred and fifty in Cilicia, a hundred in Scytholatronia, Sardians thirty, Macedonians sixty – killed, that is – in one day alone.
PY: How many does that make altogether?
AR: Seven thousand.
PY: Must be at least that. You’re an excellent accountant …
AR: The women are all at your feet, and no wonder; they can’t resist your good looks …
PY: It really is a bore to be so good-looking.5
Once we have been introduced to the soldier, his cunning slave (servus callidus) Palaestrio (‘Wrestler’) comes on and addresses the audience in themanner of a prologue speaker. Before the play began, he had been the slave of a man called Pleusicles in Athens, fromwhere the soldier had abducted Philocomasium (‘Party Girl’), Pleusicles’ courtesan sweetheart, and shipped her back to Ephesus. Palaestrio had given chase, but had been captured by pirates, and then sold on to Pyrgopolynices. However, he had got word back to his master, who has just arrived in Ephesus, where Periplectomenus has made his home available to him. The neighbour is also in on a scheme to enable the lovers to meet by means of a secret passage between the two houses. Palaestrio is going to play a trick on the dim-witted slave who has been detailed to guard the girl:
One girl is going to pretend to be two girls,
One from this house and one from that: same girl
But pretending to be a different one – all right?6
At this point Periplectomenus comes out with bad news. Someone from the soldier’s household, who was chasing a monkey, has seen Pleusicles and Philocomasium kissing in the house next door. After some elaborate cogitations Palaestrio dreams up a scheme to persuade this person that he has seen Philocomasium’s identical twin sister (who, of course, does not exist), who has just arrived from Athens with a man who is in love with her. Philocomasium will masquerade as her twin, and use the secret passage.
It emerges that the soldier’s slave Sceledrus (‘Rascal’) saw the lovers kissing. It is odd that Palaestrio has told us about his plan to deceive his fellow slave before he knows that it is he that saw Philocomasium, but anomalies like this do not seem to have worried the audience too much as long as they were kept entertained. The spectators are also in on the secret, as Palaestrio accuses Sceledrus of lying and brings Philocomasium out of the soldier’s house to prove it. When Sceledrus sticks to his story, Philocomasium introduces the twin sister idea, and in the next scene we see the ‘twin’ in the house next door. When Palaestrio addresses her by name she tells him that she is actually called Honoria, and that she has come to Ephesus to look for her twin. Sceledrus is still not convinced, but she evades him and scurries back into Periplectomenus’ house. Palaestrio announces his intention of attacking the house, but when Sceledrus goes into the soldier’s house to fetch a sword, he emerges having seen the ‘real’ Philocomasium lying on a bed. The neighbour Periplectomenus plays his part by storming out and threatening Sceledrus with severe punishment for assaulting his lady guest. Sceledrus still wants proof, though, which he receives thanks to the girl skipping through the secret passage once more to play the twin, and one final time when he goes back home and again sees Philocomasium herself. At last he accepts the trick.
As we enter Act III, the lovers’ secret is safe, but they still need rescuing from the soldier. Simply using the secret passage as a means of escape would not be dramatically interesting, so Periplectomenus is made an important element in the second trick that Palaestrio then hatches, along with four other accomplices: Philocomasium; Pleusicles, who will impersonate a ship’s captain; Acroteleutium (‘High End’), a courtesan who will become the fictitious wife of Periplectomenus, and pretend to be head-over-heels in love with the soldier; and her maid Milphidippa.
A light-hearted scene that is sometimes regarded as an example of contaminatio shows us a drunken slave of the soldier’s called Lurcio, who tells us that Sceledrus is also inebriated and asleep. This allows Philocomasium access to the secret passage. Periplectomenus then comes out with Acroteleutium and Milphidippa, and Palaestrio goes over the details of the trick once more, even though he has already done this – not really because the characters are slow on the uptake, but because the audience are.
At the start of Act IV Palaestrio gives his master Pyrgopolynices a ring as a love token, explaining that a young, gorgeous admirer wants to have an affair with him (and to escape her ageing husband, who just happens to be Periplectomenus). The vain and lecherous soldier is so aroused by this that he is prepared to offload Philocomasium, along with all the ‘jewellery and stuff’ that he has given her, and to grant Palaestrio his freedom and let him go with her. Knowingly overheard by Pyrgopolynices, Milphidippa delivers a soliloquy outlining her mistress’ desires. The soldier is deflected from lusting after the maid, and then falls headlong into the trap: he agrees to the request for a ‘date’, and tells Philocomasium to clear out back to Athens with her sister. Acroteleutium now plays her part to perfection, which, being a prostitute, comes easily. Milphidippa acts as intermediary, and adds the detail that Acroteleutium has already divorced her husband in anticipation of taking up with Pyrgopolynices; since the house next door was part of her dowry, she has the perfect venue for the affair.
The two women exit, to be replaced by Pleusicles disguised as a one-eyed ship’s captain who is ready to set sail with Philocomasium. There is a moment when the deception is almost discovered, but the crisis is avoided, and the two lovers depart for the harbour while Palaestrio says one last lingering farewell to his ex-master. The act ends with a slave inviting the soldier to meet his new mistress.
The final act is short. Pyrgopolynices has walked headlong into an ambush and is dragged out of the house, humiliated, beaten and threatened with torture until he promises to mend his ways. The final indignity is inflicted by Sceledrus, who returns from the harbour with the news that Philocomasium is gone and that the ‘sea-captain’ was in fact her lover. Pyrgopolynices acknowledges that it is a ‘fair cop’, and that justice has been done, and asks the audience for their applause.
Terence: The Brothers
According to tradition, Terence (Publius Terentius Afer), was born in Carthage in 184 BCE (or 195 BCE), brought up as a slave in the house of the Roman Senator Terentius Lucanus, and suffered a fatal accident in Greece or Asia Minor in around 159 BCE. A good-looking and talented man, Terence moved in very different social circles to Plautus, and is said to have established friendships with C. Laelius Sapiens and Scipio Africanus the Younger, who were both part of the philhellene ‘Scipionic Circle’. The Brothers was first performed at the funeral games of L. Aemilius Paullus, the father of Scipio Africanus the Younger, in 160 BCE. This association with Rome’s intellectual elite led to accusations that it was them, not Terence, who wrote the plays, but this seems unlikely.
Terence went in for much less broad comedy and buffoonery than Plautus, and adopted quite a serious and intellectually demanding approach, challenging the spectator to reflect on problems of behaviour and personal relationships. Most of his plays flopped.
Getting a mauling by the critics led to Terence dispensing with conventional prologues and replacing them with extra-dramatic, scholarly self-justifications. At the start of The Brothers he rejects the accusation of plagiarism, tries to fudge the issue of whether or not his eminent friends collaborate with him, and admits to interpolating part of a second Greek play, the Synapothneskontes (Joined in Death) by Diphilus, to construct his own, which is based on an original by Menander (also called The Brothers). His removal of the divine prologues may be motivated by considerations of realism, a desire to keep the spectators in suspense, or simply to prevent them getting bored (a lengthy extra-dramatic prologue followed by a divine one would be boring): so he starts his plays proper with a dramatic dialogue or a monologue, and explains the plot’s antecedents in the early scenes.
The Brothers is set in Athens and deals with the issue of how best to educate young men, and also with the ‘Generation Gap’. Demea, who is of the ‘harsh old man’ (senex durus) and ‘angry old man’ (senex iratus) type, has two sons, Ctesipho and Aeschinus, who, in keeping with their ‘young man’ (adulescens) type, are both in love: Ctesipho with Bacchis (‘Party Girl’), a music girl belonging to a pimp (leno); Aeschinus, who has been adopted by Demea’s brother Micio, with a more respectable girl called Pamphila. Micio has raised Aeschinus with considerable tolerance, whereas Demea has been quite tough on Ctesipho. The older brothers are both concerned by the challenges of raising their boys: Terence presents them as both partly right, but each mistaken in the value of his method.
Micio enters the stage to express his anxiety that Aeschinus has still not come home from a party. He is a laid-back, unmarried urban-dweller who enjoys his leisure and fosters a liberal relationship with his adopted son. As a senex lenis (lenient old man), he advocates the use of affection and free will to train Aeschinus to choose the right course of action of his own accord: pudor (a sense of decency) and liberalitas (conduct worthy of a free man) permeate Micio’s attitude to life. His dissimilarities with his brother become apparent when Demea joins him on stage. The latter is a married country dweller who saves his money, and he is livid to find out that Aeschinus has broken into a house and abducted a girl. Micio, who believes that ‘boys will be boys’, tells Demea to concentrate on bringing up his own son, who, incidentally, Demea thinks is a model of virtuous sobriety. Yet, once Demea exits, Micio confides that he is more concerned about Aeschinus than he is willing to admit publicly: Aeschinus has recently said that he will settle down and get married, so the abduction of a disreputable music girl is obviously worrying.
Aeschinus then enters with his ‘thug slave’ Parmeno and the abducted girl, hotly pursued by her hard-headed capitalist pimp Sannio. This is the scene introduced from Diphilus’ Joined in Death, and the audience will doubtless have enjoyed watching the girl being safely delivered into Micio’s residence and seeing Sannio getting a battering from Parmeno, even though Parmeno’s role is ludicrously small (he speaks only two words in the Latin). Aeschinus tells the pimp that he will pay him the (relatively cheap) cost price of the girl, and Sannio has little choice other than to accept. (The downside of removing the divine prologue is that the audience will not realize until the next scene that Demea has got the wrong end of the stick: Aeschinus has abducted the girl for Ctesipho, not for himself.)
Aeschinus’ servus callidus Syrus tries to persuade Sannio to accept the money for the girl, but the negotiations are interrupted by the arrival of Ctesipho, in fits of delight about his girlfriend and the help that his brother has given him. As it emerges that Ctesipho and Aeschinus are brothers, we have to adjust our opinion of them: Aeschinus is not doing the round of the whores, and Micio’s education seems to be bearing fruit; Ctesipho lacks self-confidence but is not exactly a paragon of virtue, and Demea’s system is not working as it should. So the situation has now developed into a ‘dual plot’, weaving together similar problems and complications involving two young men, two girls, two fathers and two educational systems.
Our opinion of Aeschinus changes immediately however, when a conversation between Pamphila’s mother Sostrata and the nurse Canthara reveals that Pamphila is pregnant; Aeschinus is the father; and the birth is imminent. Aeschinus has raped Pamphila (not seduced her – if she had been a consenting partner, it would have damaged her reputation too severely), although the women still think pretty highly of him, and he obviously loves her. He just hasn’t been able to tell Micio about it. This is understandable: Micio’s consent to a marriage was essential because there was no way in Athenian society that a young man with no money could support a family; bringing a new member into Micio’s household, and then offspring who might have claims on the estate, was an issue of great relevance to him. The new wife would need a reasonable dowry to contribute to these obligations; but Pamphila is poor and doesn’t have a dowry.
From Pamphila and Sostrata’s point of view (there is no father on the scene) the situation is also potentially very bleak. Taking the matter to court was practically impossible, since a woman could only conduct the case through her kyrios and, even if she won, the girl’s future marriage prospects would probably be wrecked. It was better for them to get Aeschinus to apologize, promise to marry Pamphila and try to win over his father. Unfortunately, their predicament is intensified with the arrival of Sostrata’s slave Geta, who performs a ‘running slave’ routine before announcing that Aeschinus has abducted the music girl and thus abandoned Pamphila. Rather than hush up the whole thing, Sostrata sends Geta to tell her relative Hegio about it, while Canthara goes off in search of the midwife.
Demea now returns, having found out that Ctesipho was involved in the abduction. He runs into Syrus, who exploits Demea’s implicit faith in Ctesipho’s virtue to fool the old man by telling him that Ctesipho has given Aeschinus a good telling off and is now back at the farm. Demea is just on the point of heading off there, when Hegio and Geta show up. Hegio is shocked by Aeschinus’ behaviour, says he will stand by Sostrata, and proceeds to tell Demea about the rape and desertion of Pamphila. As Pamphila’s birth-pangs are heard offstage, Hegio insists that Demea’s family do the decent thing. Demea stomps to find his brother, followed by Hegio on the same mission.
Act IV kicks off with Ctesipho coming out of Micio’s house with Syrus. He is anxious that his father might soon come looking for him, andmakes a sharp exit when Demea does precisely that. Syrus, though, manipulates Demea’s paternal pride by pretending that Ctesipho has given him a beating for being implicated in the abduction, and then sends Demea off on a wild-goose chase to the outskirts of Athens, where he says he can find Micio. Syrus then goes inside to enjoy some food and wine.
Syrus’ place on stage is taken by Micio and Hegio, who are by now in possession of the full facts. Micio’s response to Pamphila’s pregnancy is honourable and he promises Hegio that he will do the right thing. They exit to Sostrata’s house to make assurances to her, whereupon Aeschinus emerges in a state of utter distraction. He has found out that people think he has deserted Pamphila for the music girl, but he still can’t bring himself to explain – because he wants to protect his brother. Finally he plucks up the courage to knock on Sostrata’s door and set the record straight.
To Aeschinus’ consternation, Micio answers the door. The old man enjoys teasing Aeschinus, although his aside, ‘He’s blushing; all’s well’7 shows his confidence in the boy’s fundamentally upright character. He spins a story about Pamphila having to be married off to her nearest male relative, who will take her away to Miletus. This is precisely the type of scenario that would apply under Athenian law, and the prospect reduces the boy to tears, but at this point Micio reveals that he knows the truth, and proceeds to give Aeschinus a dressing down for raping the girl, not telling anyone about it, and dithering for nine months. But then he lets him off, and tells him that he can marry her. Aeschinus has the humility to acknowledge the error of his ways. He gushes with praise, love and respect for his adoptive father.
Demea now returns from his fruitless search for Micio, and encounters him coming out of Sostrata’s house. Always the last to learn what is going on, he is full of outrage about the ‘new’ information concerning Aeschinus’ depravity. Micio puts him straight, explains about the impending marriage, and adds that the music girl (who Demea still thinks is Aeschinus’ mistress) will stay in the house as well. Uttering all manner of expletives, Demea rails against the morality of the situation and its financial ramifications.
Syrus then reappears in a state of total inebriation, much to Demea’s disgust, but when a slave calls out to him that Ctesipho wants to speak with him, Demea storms into Micio’s house, where he finally learns the truth. The two elder brothers now end up face to face: Demea complains that Micio has broken their agreement by involving himself with Ctesipho; Micio says that, financially at least, no damage has been done and that he is prepared to cover the costs; Demea raises the issue of morality, to which Micio responds by asserting that the boys are fundamentally good and will turn out all right in the end; Demea finally agrees to come to the wedding, but is determined to remove his son to his farm the next morning and set the music girl to work there.
We have witnessed the reactions of Demea to successive reports about the behaviour, both good and bad, of his sons, but now he decides to take control. Like Knemon in Menander’s Old Cantankerous, he learns from experience and modifies his attitude. When Syrus, Geta and Aeschinus appear he is uncharacteristically nice to them all, initiating acts of ‘generosity’ that are funded entirely by Micio. Demea persuades Micio to continue the unification of the households by marrying Sostrata, and then further exploits Micio’s liberality by asking him to give Hegio the use of a piece of family property just outside the town, and adeptly turning his earlier platitude – ‘the besetting fault of us all is that in old age we think too much of money’ – against him when he objects. Finally Demea arranges for the manumission of Syrus, along with a financial loan.
Demea’s role-play is designed to show that blind indulgence can be counter-productive, and it shows that Micio’s popularity was due to excessive leniency. The characterization of the two elderly brothers is probably influenced by Aristotle’s concept of the ‘mean of liberality’, which lies between the extremes of ‘stingy rigour’ and ‘undiscerning prodigality’,8 and their presentation basically follows Theophrastus’ stereotypes of the liberal and the stingy man.9 Demea concludes by proposing a compromise that involves a moderate amount of restraint and advice, and this proves attractive to Aeschinus, who then asks what is going to happen to Ctesipho. Demea says that he has given his consent for him to keep his girl, on condition that she is his last, and on that positive note the play ends.
Later Influence
Plautus’ Pyrgopolynices is perhaps the finest braggart warrior in Roman comedy, and his influence extended into the Renaissance: in the sixteenth century Lodovico Dolce based Il Capitano on The Swaggering Soldier; in France, Baïf used the play as the basis forLe Brave, as did Mareschal for Le Capitan Fanfaron; in England Nicholas Udall’s play Ralph Roister Doister, the first real English comedy, was derived from The Swaggering Soldier (with additional material from Terence’s Eunuch); and some think that Falstaff in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor is ultimately derived from Pyrgopolynices. As far as Terence is concerned, Julius Caesar allegedly said he was a ‘sort of watered downMenander’. Certainly, Terence is not an original dramatist by modern standards, but he is more than just a transmitter of Greek New Comedy to Republican Rome. The fact that Terence is seldom as funny as Plautus raises the fundamental question: ‘does comedy have to be funny?’ The answer, as Sam Goldwyn acknowledged after the making of The Goldwyn Follies in 1937 (‘Our comedies are not to be laughed at’10), is ‘no’. This is because ‘comedy’ meant something totally different to theGreeks and Romans than it does to us. They recognized three types of literary drama: tragedy, comedy and farce. Farce was intended solely to make the audience laugh, but comedy did more: it explored interpersonal relationships, analysed human nature and generally ended happily. But, just as tragedy did not have to be ‘tragic’, comedy did not have to be funny.
Notes – Chapter 12
1. Galen, Opera 1.14.631ff.
2. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 3.11.77.
3. Horace, Epistles 2.1.175f., trans. N. Rudd, Horace: Satires and Epistles; Persius: Satires, rev. edn, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
4. E. Segal, Roman Laughter, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, 7.
5. Plautus, The Swaggering Soldier, 42 ff., trans. E.F. Watling, in Plautus: The Pot of Gold and Other Plays, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
6. Ibid., 150 ff.
7. Terence, The Brothers 643.
8. Aristotle, E.N. 112.a.10ff.
9. Theophrastus, The Characters 10.
10. M. Freeland, The Goldwyn Touch, London: Harrap, 1986.