... Et puis, ils s'addressaient a des spectateurs meridionaux,
coutumiers dans la vie quotidienne d'une gesticulation plus animee que la
notre." And this is said as a combined estimate of New Comedy and
_palliatae_.
We are now prepared to advance a definite thesis, that shall gather up the
random threads of argument and suggestion scattered through the foregoing
pages and shall, we hope, provide a conclusive and final answer to both of
our original questions. If we can establish: that our author's sole aim
was to feed the popular hunger for amusement; that, while after leaving
much of his Greek originals practically untouched, he considered them in
effect but a medium for the provocation of laughter, but a vessel into
which to pour a highly seasoned brew of fun; that to this end his actors
went before the public, potentially speaking slap-stick in hand, equipped
by nature with liveliness of grimace and gesture and prepared to act with
verve, unction and an abandon of dash and vigor that would produce a riot
of merriment; that his dramatic machinery is hopelessly crippled and that
his evident intentions and effects are hopelessly lost unless interpreted
in this spirit: then we relegate Plautine drama to a low plane of broad
farce, where verisimilitude to life becomes wholly unnecessary because
undesirable; where the canons of dramatic art become inoperative; where,
contrary to what Koerting says, we are not asked to believe that
"everything is happening in a perfectly natural manner"; where the poet
may stick at nothing provided the laugh be forthcoming; where all the
apparently absurd conventions of _palliatae_ cease to be absurd, vanish
into thin air and become unamenable to literary criticism, inasmuch as
they are all only part of the laugh-compelling scheme.
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