But again we
find ourselves falling short of a satisfying answer to our question.
Again, some _solvent_ is needed. As the last resort, we turn to the
evidence of the plays themselves and the unbounded realm of subjective
criticism.
From the earliest times gesture and business in Aristophanes and the Old
Comedy were marked by the riotous license of all the media of that notable
epoch[108] of comedy. From the broad spirit of its frank and vivid
burlesque not even the most stolidly Teutonic of humorless critics ever
thought of demanding a "picture of life." But with the abandonment of the
purpose of political propaganda, the consequent disappearance of the
chorus with its burlesque trappings (largely through motives of state
economy), and the establishment in the New Comedy of a type of dramatic
machinery that had a specious outer shell of reflection of characters and
events in daily life, the critics instantly seem to demand the standard of
dramatic technique of Aristotle and Freytag and condemn all departures
from this standard. In reality, we believe that the kinship of Plautus
with Aristophanes is much closer than has usually been realized.
Is, then, the change from Old to New Comedy as great as has been
represented? Does not the change consist rather in the outer form and in
the ideas expounded than in the spirit of the histrionism and mimicry? And
must not the vigor, from what we have seen, have been intensified in
Plautus? LeGrand alone seems to have caught the essence of this:[109] "Que
dire de la mimique? D'apres les indications contenues dans le texte meme
des comedies, d'apres les commentaires--notamment ceux de Donat, d'apres
les monuments figures--en particulier les images des manuscrits, elle
devait etre en general tres vive, souvent trop vive pour le gout des
modernes.
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