This gives us a clue to the next topic.
B. _Devices absurd and inexplicable unless interpreted in a broad farcical
spirit._
This includes peculiarities that have usually been commented on as
weaknesses or conventions, or else been given up as hopeless
incongruities, but which we hope to prove also yield their quota of
amusement if clownishly performed. The foremost of these is the famous
1. Running Slave or Parasite.
We all know him: rushing madly cross stage at top-speed (if we take the
literal word of the text for it), with girded loins, in search of somebody
right under his nose, the while unburdening himself of exhaustive periods
that, however great the breadth of the Roman stage, would carry him
several times across and back: as Curculio in 279 ff.:
"Make way for me, friends and strangers, while I carry out my duty here.
Run, all of you, scatter and clear the road! I'm in a hurry and I don't
want to butt into anybody with my head, or elbow, or chest, or knee....
And there's none so rich as can stand in my way, ... none so famous but
down he goes off the sidewalk and stands on his head in the street," and
so on for ten lines or more. After he has found his patron Phaedromus, he
is apparently so exhausted that he cries: "Hold me up, please, hold me up!
(_Wobbles and falls panting into Phaedromus' arms._)
PH.... Get him a chair ... quick!"
When Leonida enters (_As.
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