You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
eakers. Now, now, danger ! One is overboard ! Ah, the water's<br />
not deep : she'll swim out in a minute. Hooray ! See the other<br />
one, how the wave tossed her out ! She is up, she's on her way<br />
shoreward ; she's safe !"<br />
Sceparnio clasps his hands, jumps up and down, grasps the<br />
shaking Daemones convulsively and communicates his excitement<br />
to the audience. It is a piece of thrilling theatrical declamation<br />
and must have wrought the spectators up to a high pitch. In<br />
general, the Rud. is a superior play.<br />
In Cas. 229 ff. there is developed a piece of faithful and entertaining<br />
character-drawing, as the old roue Lysidamus fawns upon his<br />
militant spouse Cleostrata, with the following as its climax :<br />
"CLE. (Sniffling.) Ha ! Whence that odor of perfumes, eh ?<br />
LYS. The jig's up."<br />
In the whole panorama of Plautine personae the portrayal of<br />
Alcmena in the Amph. is unique, for she is drawn with absolute<br />
sincerity and speaks nothing out of character. Certainly no<br />
parody can be made out of the nobly spoken lines 633-52, which<br />
lend a genuine air of tragedy to the professed tragi(co)comoedia<br />
(59, 63) ; unless we think of the lady's unwitting compromising condition<br />
(surely too subtle a thought for the original audience) . Note<br />
also the exalted tone of 831-4, 839-42. But all through this<br />
scene Sosia is prancing around, prating nonsense, and playing the<br />
buffoon, so that perchance even here the nobility becomes but a<br />
foil for the revelry. And in 882-955 his royal godship Jove clowns<br />
it to the lady's truly minted sentiments.<br />
No, we are far from attempting to deny to Plautus all dramatic<br />
technique, skill in character painting and cleverness of situation,<br />
but he was never hide-bound by any technical considerations. He<br />
felt free to break through the formal bonds of his selected medium<br />
at will. He had wit, esprit and above all a knowledge of his<br />
audience ; and of human nature generally, or else he could not<br />
have had such a trenchant effect on the literature of all time.<br />
At any rate, the above lonely landmarks cannot affect our<br />
comprehensive estimate of the mise-en-scene. Enough has been<br />
said, we believe, in our discussion of the criticism and acting and<br />
in our analysis of his dramatic values, to show that the aberrations<br />
of Plautus' commentators have been due to their failure to reach<br />
the crucial point : the absolute license with which his plays were<br />
acted and intended to be acted is at once the explanation of their<br />
67
Change language