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LIGHT DRAMA
Characterization is not a category in its own right. It is a function of five
others: the plot, the typology, the musical and metrical form, the diction and
the dramatic illusion. In New Comedy, a dramatist began with the germ of a
dramatic idea; this involved certain roles. The action, as it was worked out in
greater detail, determined which of the traditional stock of named masks —
the dramatis personae 'masks of the action' — would be suitable; Daos, Laches,
Myrrina, etc. It was the same in tragedy, and it is in this context that one should
understand Aristotle's assertion of the primacy of the 'story' over 'character'
(Arist. Poetics 1450820-2). In proceeding thus New Comedy playwrights
were like Goldoni writing for masked Italian commedia types rather than, say,
Jonson or Moliere, whose typology was derived not from appearance, the
outer shell, but from a theory of humours, the categories of inner disposition.
A playwright might commission a special new mask for a particular purpose,
for example the grumpy Knemon of Dyskolos or the Carthaginian Himilkon
of Karchedonios, both Menandrian inventions; these might be used by someone
else, and, if popular, join the 'stock'. Essentially, however, New Comedy
writers began with a plot and selected the necessary chessmen for their game
from a simple typology based on appearance, age, and class as denoted by the
named masks. Daos appears in at least eight of sixteen better-known Menanderplays.
No doubt he looked the same in each and the Athenian audience knew
who he was without being told and how he differed in physiognomy from his
fellow-slaves Parmenon, Getas, and Tibeios. This, however, did not determine
his ethos, at least in the hands of a master like Menander. In one play he is
deftly sketched and has a tiny role; in another he is drawn more fully and carefully,
and quite differently as a 'character'. So the old bottles might be filled
with different wines. The importance of plot and typology of the masked
drama being defined thus, the other factors, diction, metrical form, and dramatic
illusion were developed in New Comedy to sustain a quiet and relatively
prosaic naturalism. This was essential for the subtle and realistic depiction of
ordinary contemporaries, the 'mirroring of life' which came to be seen as
characteristic of the genre, and towards which Terence sought to bring the
reluctant form of comedy as inherited from Plautus and Caecilius.
Plautus' approach to characterization will be understood best if we review
in turn the five aspects of the term as defined above. First, as to plot. He did
not approach his task like a Menander or his own Pseudolus, who, ' like a poet
when he has opened his notebook seeks for what is not, yet finds it' {Pseud.
4Oiff.). The plot is given, and is not the real substance of his plays. He cuts,
stretches, squashes, and amplifies. Dramaturgically, all Plautus' plays are far
simpler than the early yet complex and finely-handled Dyskolos of Menander.
The comings and goings have been simplified, and with them, the action. The
motive for alteration and expansion is generally Plautus' desire to amplify the
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