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LIGHT DRAMA
Ballio's entrance in Pseudolus is a memorable expansion of a brief doorstep
address, introducing the Roman idea that it is his birthday and presents must
be given him (Pseud. I33ff.). The imbalance of Men. noff. and 466S., 6038.
and 7ooff. is due to the different musical presentations. Plautus likes to spin
out that split second when two people notice each other, 1 and keeps surprising
the audience with his variations of musical form.
Female characters (played by boys) are given highly operatic parts in proportion
to their charms: the Bacchis sisters, Palaestra and Ampelisca (Rudens),
Adelphasium and Anterastilis (Poenulus), and others such never merely speak
senarii. When women do, e.g. the girl in Persa, it is because the mode has been
established for the scene by an unsympathetic male character. Matrona in
Menaechmi is a significant exception: she has the initiative at 559rF. and 70iff.,
but she chooses senarii, a formal hint that we are not to feel too sorry for her.
The flowery language of Phoenicium's letter {Pseud. 46ff.) in senarii is, as it
were, a canticum in reported speech. Conversely, villains like Cappadox (Cur.)
and Lycus (Poen.) or unsympathetic characters like the tutor Lydus in Bacchides
live in the worlds of senarii and septenarii. It is part of Ballio's outrageous
charm in Pseudolus that, very unconventionally for a leno, he bursts on us in
song at his first entrance. Even he spends most of his time in the more prosaic
modes. Pivotal characters, the lovers and their slaves, are equally at home in all
three modes, e.g. Pseudolus and Calidorus, Tranio and Philolaches (Mostellaria).
It is important that the mere reader be careful to allow for bold, unpredictable
changes of mood and pace which are an expression of the musical
structure. The plot is not only distorted by truncations and additions, there is
a certain variable geometry of space, time, and mood, a more than Elizabethan
variety of tone. In Poen. iii.3 we may almost be persuaded that we are eavesdropping
on an internally stylized but self-consistent representation of a
street-scene; there is no question of that in v.4 of the same play, where we are
assaulted by a kaleidoscopic mixture of the most varied emotions and impressionistic
presentation. The metrical presentation of a persona is thus not an
insignificant element of his characterization and is a major aspect of the dramatic
experience.
Plautine diction, the fourth aspect of characterization, is not intended to
sustain the prosaic realism of a Menander. In canticum and recitative Plautus
was normally embroidering and filling out trimeters in the prolix and alliterative
manner evident at Bac. 496-500 ~ Dis exapaton 11—16. Even his senarii
are by comparison with Menander's trimeters emphatically a verse-diction,
not a mere analogue for prose. Here he is like Naevius. End-stopping is the
norm; the movement and weight of the verse are elements of the meaning;
1
Bac. 534ff. (contrast Dis exapaton 101), Amph. 29zff. (recitative); Persa \-$S. (canticum); Poen.
975 ff. (senarit).
Ill
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