It
is almost too much to make any of this a basis for argument as to
classical and pre-classical stage-craft. It is at least significant that
every character with hands free is gesticulating and the scene from _Eun._
IV. 6-7 is evidently full of vigorous action.
An old and discursive article[84] by T. Baden, containing a description
and analysis of the gestures and posture of a number of familiar figures
from comedy exemplified in some collections of statuettes (chiefly those
in Borgia's Museum of Baden's time), is open to the same objection as the
above. The gestures of slave, pander, parasite, etc., described in the
article are lively and expressive to be sure, but contain little to
differentiate them from those of daily life.
While much of our evidence is still to come, we believe that we are
already justified in the deduction that the actor contemporary with
Plautus must have indulged in the extravagances of the players in the
Atellan farces and the mimes. The _mimus_ of the Empire, we know,
specialized in ridiculous facial contortions.[85]
We must not forget too the vivacity indicated by the comic scenes among
the Pompeian and Herculanean wall-paintings,[86] which have a close
kinship with the Terentian MSS. pictures. Nor must we lose sight of the
fact that all our pictorial _reliquiae_ portray the later masked
characters, and hence play of feature, which must have been a notable
concomitant of the original Plautine performance, is entirely obscured.
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