At least it is superior
to the average vaudeville skit of the present day. It must not be
forgotten too that, as Plautus was in close touch with his players, he
could have done much of the stage-directing himself and might even have
worked up some parts to fit the peculiar talents of certain actors, as is
regularly done in the modern "tailormade drama."
There are numbers of scenes of the sort quoted above, where the apparent
monotony and verbal padding could be converted into coin for laughter by
the clever comedian. _Amph._ 551-632 could be worked up poco a poco
crescendo e animato; in _Poen._ 504 ff., Agorastocles and the _Advocati_
bandy extensive rhetoric; in _Trin._ 276 ff., the action is suspended
while Philto proves himself Polonius' ancestor in his long-winded
sermonizing to Lysiteles and his insistent _laudatio temporis acti_; in
_St._ 326 ff., as Pinacium, the _servus currens_, finally succeeds in
"arriving" out of breath (he has been running since 274), bursting with
the vast importance of his news, he postpones the delivery of his tidings
till 371 while he indulges in irrelevant badinage. This is pure
buffoonery. And we can instance scene upon scene where the self-evident
padding can either furnish an excuse for agile histrionism, or become
merely tiresome in its iteration[161]. The danger of the latter was even
recognized by our poet, when, at the end of much word-fencing, Acanthio
asks Charinus if his desire to talk quietly is prompted by fear of waking
"the sleeping spectators" (_Mer.
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