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MIS. (In a loud and offensive voice.) Won't my interest be paid ?<br />
TR. I know you have a good voice ; don't shout so loud.<br />
MIS. (Louder.) Hang it, but I will shout !<br />
TR. (Groans and glances over shoulder again.) Run along home,<br />
there's a good fellow. (Urges him toward exit.)", etc.<br />
Tranio has a chance for very lively business: a sickly smile for<br />
the usurer, lightning glances of apprehension towards Theopropides,<br />
with an occasional intimate groan aside to the audience.<br />
Other farcical scenes of the many that may be cited as calling for<br />
particularly vivacious business and gesture are, e. g., Cas. 62I ff.,<br />
where Pardalisca befools Lysidamus by timely fainting, Rud. 4I4 ff.,<br />
where Sceparnio flirts with Ampelisca, and the quarrel scene, Rud.<br />
485 ff.!2<br />
The last four passages quoted in translation are by no means<br />
lacking in artistic humor and a measure of reality, but they imply<br />
a pronounced heightening of the actions and emotions of everyday<br />
life and lose their humor unless presented in the broad spirit that<br />
stamps them as belonging to the plane of farce. We now pass on<br />
to motives where the dialogue aims at effects manifestly unnatural<br />
and where verisimilitude is sacrificed to the joke, as we have seen<br />
it is in the employment of "bombast," "true burlesque," etc.<br />
The first of these motives is a stream of copious abuse, as in Per.<br />
406 ff., where Toxilus servos and Dordalus leno exchange Rabelaisian<br />
compliments.<br />
"TaX. (Hopping about with rabid gestures.) You filthy pimp,<br />
you mud-heap, you common dung-hill, you besmirched, corrupt,<br />
law-breaking decoy, you public sewer, robber, mobber,<br />
jobber, !<br />
DOR. (Who has been dancing around in jury, shaking his fist<br />
until exhausted by his paroxysms.) Wait-till-(Puffing) -Iget<br />
-my breath-I'll-answer you 1 You dregs of the rabble, you<br />
slave-brothel, you 'white-slave' freer, you sweat-of-the-Iash, you<br />
chain gang, you king of the treadmill, . . . you eat-away, stealaway<br />
run-away. !" etc.13<br />
Perhaps we have here the forerunner of the shrewish wife in<br />
modern vaudeville, who administers to her shrinking consort a<br />
12Cf. further Most. 265 ff., 456 ff. and note Donat. ad Phor. 210-I I: hie<br />
locus magis actoris quam lectoris est.<br />
13Cf. Most. 38 ff., Poen. 1309 ff. Cf. also "Lavishing of terms of endearment,"<br />
supra, A. 3. C.<br />
43
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