Asides in New Comedy and the Palliata - Leeds International ...

ECKARD LEFÈVRE, ASIDES IN NEW COMEDY AND THE PALLIATA
ego id cavebo, nam alicubi apstrudam foris.
ego faxo et operam et vinum perdiderit simul.
Plautus cannot get enough of comic effects of this kind. He really carries the use
of asides to extremes.
Terence
In comparison with Plautus’ excessive use of asides, Terence is more
restrained. It is not necessary to pay special attention to him in this context: as far
as Plautus’ kinds of asides occur in Terence, he could have got to know them from
Plautus directly. But even a superficial reading shows that there is little that is
comparable in Terence.
A glance at Terence’s most burlesque comedy, the Eunuchus, shall suffice to
illustrate this idea. In scene I 2, containing more than 120 lines, Parmeno, who
sometimes plays the ‘fool’, has two asides only (type Ib):
87 ceterum
de exclusione verbum nullum?
178 labascit victus uno verbo quam cito!
These comments are moderate and appropriate. The same holds true for
Parmeno’s asides during Gnatho’s entrance monologue in II 2. Even if one
assumes that Strouthias in Menander’s Kolax delivers a similar speech on which
‘Gnatho’s monologue is modelled (whether closely or not)’, 18 it is not necessary
that a slave comments on it in Menander, as Parmeno does in Terence (type IIa):
254 scitum hercle hominem! hic homines prorsum ex stultis insanos facit.
265 viden otium et cibus quid facit alienus?
That is appropriate, as Donatus observes, commenting on line 254: mire Terentius
longae orationi interloquia quaedam adhibet, ut fastidium prolixitatis evitet, velut
nunc Parmeno procul audiens Gnathonem haec loquitur; referring to the second
instance he says: rursus Parmeno et facetias dicit et distinguit longiloquium
parasiti (1). If one believed that Terence took over the listener’s asides together
with the monologue, a comparison with Megadorus’ monologue commented on by
Euclio in Aulularia III 5 would make it clear how little Menander (just like
Terence) capitalized on such a situation in terms of comic elements. 19 But
structural criteria alone would already be an obstacle. 20
As soon as Gnatho notices Parmeno, the latter remarks (type Ib):
18 Brown 1992, 107. See also Denzler 1968, 65-6.
19 Sure enough, Parmeno’s words are ‘caustic asides’ (Goldberg 1986, 109).
20 As Denzler 1968, 68 has been able to demonstrate, there is a large number of ‘interrupted’
eavesdropping monologues of comparable length (22 and 10 long lines) in Plautus, whereas there
are none in Menander and only two more in Terence, namely ‘in den Monodien des Pamphilus An
241ff. (10 und 12 Langverse), wo die Gestaltung als Lauscher-Monolog wohl von Terenz stammt,
und des Geta Ad 299ff. (6 und 10 Langverse), wo Terenz wohl gegenüber der Vorlage erweitert
hat’.
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