The _Trinummus_ is crowded with interminable padded dialogue,
tiresome moral preachments, and possesses a weakly motivated plot; a
veritable "Sunday-school play."
But Becker continues: "Sive enim
seria agit et praecepta pleno
effundit penu, ad quae componere vitarn oporteat; in sententiis quanta
gravitas, orationis quanta vis, quam probe et meditate cum hominum ingenia
moresque novisse omnia testantur." We feel sure that our Umbrian fun-maker
would strut in public and laugh in private, could he hear such an encomium
of his lofty moral aims. For it is our ultimate purpose to prove that
fun-maker Plautus was primarily and well-nigh exclusively a fun-maker.
[Sidenote: Weise] K. H. Weise, in "Die Komodien des Plautus, kritisch nach
Inhalt und Form beleuchtet, zur Bestimmung des Echten und Unechten in den
einzelnen Dichtungen" (Quedlinburg, 1866), follows hard on Becker's heels
and places Plautus on a pinnacle of poetic achievement in which we
scarcely recognize our apotheosized laugh-maker. Every passage in the
plays that is not artistically immaculate, that does not conform to the
uttermost canons of dramatic art, is unequivocally damned as "unecht." In
his Introduction (p. 4) Weise is truly eloquent in painting the times and
significance of our poet. With momentary insight he says: "Man hat an ihm
eine immer frische und nie versiegende Fundgrabe des aechten Volkswitzes.
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