.. cedit, quasi cancer solet: _Trin._ 623 f.: celeri
graducunt uterque: ille rcprehendit hunc priorem pallio.[107]
This practice of indicating business in the lines, of making the
play act, is common to all the older types of drama, Elizabethan as
well as classic. A single striking example from Shakespeare will
furnish a parallel, in the well-known lines from _Macbeth_:
The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon,
Where gott'st thou that goose look? (V. 3).
The modern playwright robs his lines of their vividness and
throws the onus on the actor through the medium of his interpolated
direction, a custom which reaches its most exaggerated form
in the plays of Bernard Shaw, as mentioned above.
[Sidenote: Thesis] We have now made a perceptible advance towards getting
an answer to our original questions: "What manner of drama is this?" and
"How was it done?" The comments of the most eminent critics on the former
question have left us rather bewildered by their diversity. Almost to a
man they have taken Plautus too seriously or else have arraigned him for
not conforming to their preconceived code of comedy, without questioning
whether it were Plautus' own or not. This has really nullified their
efforts to explain away the peculiarities and absurdities of his style.
Some _solvent_ of these difficulties is needed.
As to the second question, we have examined briefly the extant evidence
regarding the actor's employment of gesture and business, his delivery of
the dialogue, make-up and character delineation, and found a disappointing
paucity, but a general and irresistible trend towards liveliness, vivacity
and broad undiluted comedy that must have been the sort of dramatic fare
demanded by the primeval appetite of the Plautine audience.
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