encountering plautus in the renaissance.a humanist debate on comedy

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Encountering Plautus in the Renaissance: A Humanist Debate on ComedyAuthor(s): Richard F . Hardin

Source: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Fall 2007), pp. 789-818Published by: The University of Chicago Presson behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1353/ren.2007.0276.

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Encountering Plautus in the Renaissance:A Humanist Debate on Comedy*

byRI C H A R D F . HA R D I N

Historians of comedy can profit from a study of the sixteenth-century debates regarding the meritsof Plautus (ca. 254184 BCE), most of whose works were unknown before the late fifteenthcentury. Early performances and editions led to contemporary theories regarding laughter,language, and morality, often in the context of a comparison with the plays of Terence (d. 159BCE), who was sometimes viewed as superior by upper-class audiences. From the conflictingopinions of Andrea Navagero and Francesco Florido, to the neoclassical strictures of Daniel

Heinsius, this study pursues learned opinion on Plautus as he became a principal author in theEuropean canon. Plautuss variances from Aristotelian and Horatian precepts created a lively andlasting ferment in discussions of comedy.

1. I N T R O D U C T I O N

O

nce upon a time in the West, classical comedy, to anyone who hadstudied rhetoric, meant Terence alone. Plautus did not go unmen-

tioned, but his texts were scarce. Quotations from Plautus during theMiddle Ages often rely on secondary sources such as florilegia, and almostall later medieval Plautus manuscripts derive from only two known copiesfrom the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The well-informed thirteenth-century encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais (ca. 11901264) knew Plautusonly from the latters incompleteAulularia.1 Even when texts were available,Plautuss earlier grammar and vocabulary could be difficult compared withTerences familiar Latin, which found its way into school texts and dialogue

exercises. In fact, Terence had already acquired chief acclaim for comedy inthe late Roman Empire: Saint Augustine knew, and often cites, Terence,but never mentions Plautus. Charlemagnes library housed Terence butnot Plautus. Furthermore, Plautus had largely disappeared during theMiddle Ages, until 1428, when Nicholas of Cusa (140164) discovered a

*I wish to acknowledge the helpful criticism of Professors Barbara Bowen, JanetteDillon, and Robert S. Miola, as well as assistance from the library staffs of The Universityof Kansas and Cambridge University. Parts of this article benefited from airing at meetingsof the Central Renaissance Conference. Translations, other than published ones, are myown.

1The text of the Aulularia is available in volume 1 of Plautus.

Renaissance Quarterly60 (2007): 789818 [ 789 ]

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manuscript containing twelve lost plays. These brought the playwrightscanon to the twenty complete comedies now read and (rarely) performed. 2

Imperfect printed editions of Plautus began to appear in 1472, andcontinued with increasing frequency and some improvement over the nextcentury. At the same time, Plautus was performed on the stage. Certainly

Albrecht von Eybs earthy German translations, made before 1475, couldhave been acted, but the earliest recorded vernacular performance appearedat the court of Duke Ercole dEste at Ferrara. It attests to the esteem newlyaccorded to Plautus that by the late fifteenth century the first known publicperformance of any classical drama in any vernacular translation was that

of hisMenaechmiat Ferrara on 25 January 1486, as part of Duke Ercolescarnival entertainments honoring Francesco Gonzaga, betrothed to IsabelladEste. A witness describes the play as most beautiful and delightful.3 Theproduction had the traveling Menaechmus arrive in a realistic-lookinggalley with a sail, while the resident brothers city landscape was painted ona backdrop. Enthusiasm sparked another production of this play at thefestivities for the marriage of young Alfonso dEste to Anna Sforza, daugh-ter of the Duke of Milan, when Menaechmiwas one of three plays seen on

successive February nights in 1491. Ercole dEste

s Ferrara, in fact, took thelead in the staging of Roman comedy in translation. In all, between 1486

and 1505, Ercole had an active role in producing at least fourteen differentplays by Plautus and Terence. In 1493 he sent three productions to theSforza court in Lombardy, an event that, as Ercoles biographer ThomasTuohy observes, suggests the preeminence of the dEste theatre at thatdate.We may find it difficult to believe, but testimony reports that some10,000 spectators saw Ferraras first Menaechmiperformance.4

Entering the sixteenth century, both Plautus and Terence found favoron the stage, while scholarly attention to Plautus led many humanists todraw comparisons between him and the familiar, but less prolific, Terence.

2Segal, 25558, provides details of Roman comedys afterlife. Petrarch, who enjoyedthe playwright, registers disappointment that a learned correspondent had never even heardPlautuss name: see Petrarch, 4:216 (letter 15). Bishop, 296, admits that no one canestablish that Chaucer knew Plautus directly,claiming, rather, that Plautus came to himindirectly through medieval sources like Vitalis of Bloiss long-lived twelfth-century imita-

tion of Plautuss Amphitryo, entitled Geta: the latter play is available in Elliott, 26

49.3Uberti, 45: belletissima e piacevole. A scribal error altered the plays title to

Menechini; Uberti edits two early Ferrara translations. The Menaechmi deals with twinbrothers, separated in childhood, who then rediscover each other as adults. For the text ofthe play, see volume 1 of Plautus.

4Tuohy, 258, who adds (259) that Ercoles unfinished Sale dalle Commedie, with wallssome seventeen meters high, was the first purpose-built theatre of the Renaissance.

RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY790




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Plautus also gave rise to the lively vogue of Italian commedia erudite(learned comedy), begun by Ariosto in 1508 and renowned in the comedies

of Machiavelli. Praising Ariostos Plautine Cassaria, the first of these com-edies, a member of the aristocratic audience exclaimed that the play had avariety of things half of which are not in [the comedies of] Terence.5 Theremark implies that, as of about 1500, Terence was the educated personsmeasuring-stick for comedy. He would not be so a century later, as a resultnot only of wider acquaintance with Plautus, but of altered Europeanperceptions of comedy and theatrical performance.

In the last fifty years literary history has changed its perspective on this

story. In 1950, Marvin Herricks view went largely unquestioned: It is wellknown that Renaissance comedy was modeled principally upon the plays ofTerence, as its tragedy was modeled upon the plays of Seneca.Later workby Wolfgang Riehle and Robert S. Miola makes the case that in England,contrary to what earlier scholars like Herrick believed, Plautus was gener-ally preferred to Terence.6 This probably held true throughout Europe, but,especially in Italy during the early 1500s, we perceive a remarkable momentin the history of the reception of classical authors, as a reputation surges

from minor to major in the space of a few decades. To read Renaissancecomparisons of Plautus and Terence is to watch European culture grappleseriously for the first time with questions about comic language, audienceresponse, comic plots, comic mimesis, laughter, and the ridiculous. Theavailable tools of evaluative criticism Aristotle and, more persistently,Horace were inadequate to resolve these questions.

This is not to suggest that these tools were not employed. Aristoteliancritics instinctively linked mimesis with the oft-quoted definition of com-edy that Aelius Donatus (fl. fourth century CE) attributed to Cicero: animitation of life, a mirror of character, and an image of truth.7 In his

watershed commentary on the Poetics(1548) Francesco Robortello includesan essay on comedy as part of his effort to define genres that Aristotle hadneglected. Comedy, he suggests, is an art of mimesis: it imitates humanactions that are rather base and vile; New Comedy in particular imitatesbehavior that is daily observed in the ordinary relations of men.8 The term

5Ariosto, xix.6Herrick, 1. Riehle and Miola are anticipated by Salingar, 172, at least as regards

Shakespeare.7Donatus, 45: the phrase does not exist in any known works of Cicero. Donatus also

mentions (46) Livius Andronicuss definition of comedy as a mirror of daily life.8Robortello, 1:517, 51920: imitatur actiones hominum humiliores et viliores;

nova comoedia magis [that is, more than Old Comedy] accessit ad imitationem morum quiquotidie in communi hominum convictu cernuntur.

ENCOUNTERING PLAUTUS 791




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base, orvile, comes from Aristotle, but the category ofordinary relationsdescends from Donatus, as do other ideas in Robortello. Insofar as great

comic artists can be pigeonholed, Plautus tends to fit with the Aristoteliannotion and Terence with that of Donatus: hence, the source of at leastsome of the disagreements on the subject. Today many writers on comedy

would deny that it imitates life. Edith Kern says it belongs to the realm offantasy and play rather than mimesis, while David Scott Kastan arguesthat it is not a representation of life. . . . According to the generic defi-nitions derived from later classical commentaries on Terence, comic ac-tion unlike tragic is to be feigned rather than drawn from history,

testifying to comedys freedom to shape its fiction into conformingpatterns of wish-fulfillment.9 In fact, a real achievement of modern comictheory for example, in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, C. L. Barber,Northrop Frye, Susanne Langer, and Erich Segal has been to recognizethat the best comic dramatists have not worked from the mimetic assump-tion. Mimetic theory via Robortello continued to hold sway in theseventeenth century, partly through the midwifery of Daniel Heinsius. Histendency to depend on Terence for his examples (he scarcely mentions

Plautus) leaves the impression that he is partial to the later playwright. Yetin time, Terence, the premier Latin dramatist of the Middle Ages themodel for school and convent Latin drama as Christian Terence10

would yield ground to Plautus not just among theatrical people, but alsoamong the smaller audience being considered here: the scholars, whomostly read Plautus rather than watched him.

2 . RE D I S C O V E R I N G P L A U T U S , RE T H I N K I N G C O M E D Y

Readers who collected sententiae (maxims) enlisted early in the Plautineranks, as instanced in Bonus Accursiuss Dicta Plautina, probably printedin 1478. How can one write or say anything elegantly,the compiler asksin his preface,being ignorant of Plautus, who perhaps attained the highesteminence among all the Latins, in the testimony of Cicero.11 Erasmus(1468/69?1536), who maintained a lifelong devotion to Terence, came toPlautus late, but was so won over that his final Adagia include more

9Kern, 26; Kastan, 576.10Duckworth, 404, who notes the frequently Plautine qualities of these Terentian

plays.11Accursius,2v3: Nam quo pacto quis eleganter quicquam aut loquatur aut scribat

Plauto ignorato? Qui inter latinos omnes vel Ciceronis testimonio maxime excellit?





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quotations from Plautus than any other Roman except Cicero.12 In 1491his countryman Jacobus de Breda produced a collection of sayings aimed at

school children: theVulgaria Plauti comici iucundissimi, with Dutch trans-lations. Adages culled from Plautus are included in several early editions,and that of the Italian-Hungarian humanist and emblematist GiovanniSambuco (Ioannes Sambucus), produced in 1568, groups the sayings undersuch topics as marriage and the passions, aiming to support his claim forPlautuss moral wisdom in the face of those detractors who claimed that hepreached immorality.13

In the story of Plautuss reception in the Renaissance scholars found

various reasons, in the contentious atmosphere of humanist culture, forchoosing sides between the two Roman comic dramatists. Daniel Heinsius(15801655), in his Dissertation on the Judgment of Horace ConcerningPlautus and Terence, inherits an Italian Aristotelian outlook that favorsTerence, while Henri II Estienne (153198), in hisDissertation on PlautussLatin, loves the variety and freshness of Plautuss language. Compoundingsuch intellectual partisanship were various moments of culturalgravitas, asin Rome during the 1530s, when Terence came into higher regard because

of his more serious tone.14

The atmosphere there became so puritanical inthe era of Trent that by 1566 one Lucio Olimpio Giraldi felt obliged todefend Terence from the charge of being morally dangerous to youth bydeclaring that Terence fled from lascivious and obscene words eventhough he had before him Plautus, who was very lascivious.15 In 1565 theFrench playwright Andr de Rivaudeau used the words licentious andvicious to describe Plautus. Censorship took its toll on school texts ofPlautus, with well over half of a play omitted in some cases.16 This is notto say that all Terentians were prudes. An influential and lasting voice intheir camp was that of Andrea Navagero (14831529), poet, official his-torian of Venice, and librarian of the Marcian library, who addressed thedebate on more formal grounds. His letter, In Publii Terentii AfriComoedias, to Jean Grolier, bibliophile and secretary to the King ofFrance, appeared in many sixteenth-century editions of Terence, at least asearly as the Aldine edition of 1517, and was quoted by commentators

12Norland, 550, who refers to the last edition of theAdagia, which Erasmus augmentedin 1533.

13Sambuco, a3v.14Greco, 81.15Weinberg, 1961, 1:288.16McPherson, 28, who also notes (20, n. 6) that in 1511 Erasmus discouraged having

students read any Plautus play containing obscenity. See also Weinberg, 1950, 213, 216.





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including Bartolomeo Ricci, in his treatise on imitation, and Henri II

Estienne.17 (For some reason, the letter was always published under the

name of Francesco Asolano, more familiarly Torresano.) It deserves con-sideration as a brief for the anti-Plautus Terentians of the early sixteenthcentury, lining up the kind of criticisms that would be heard well beyondthe age. The foremost of these has to do with the language of the twoplaywrights, as seen in Navageros declaration that Plautus is somewhatcrude; he uses certain harsh and obscure words. But people spoke that waythen; he could not use any other language than that of his age. Terence isfar more refined. There is nothing in him that is awkward, nothing that isnot elegant. By that time Latin had doubtless become a more polishedlanguage. . . . Terence is more economical than Plautus, in leaving nothingto be desired. Plautuss comedies sometimes have missing parts and are notsufficiently unified; all of Terences are so well joined together, such unityis produced from all the parts, that nothing more could fit into his plots,nothing could be more precise.18

In blunt terms, Plautus is a primitive: his foremost weaknesses are hiscrude Latin and his undisciplined, artless plotting. The charge of inferiorLatin would vanish in the face of greater sophistication about the history ofLatin and frequent reminders about the high esteem in which Plautusslanguage was held by some distinguished writers of antiquity. Indeed, a fewyears before his epistle, Navagero could have read the praise of theStrasbourg humanist Hieronymus Gebwiler on this score: I dont rejectthe comedies of Terence, but as Phoebus outshines the rest of the stars withhis light, so Plautus does Terence by far with his Latinity.19 It is amusingto find that the real Francesco Asolano (Torresano) edited, at the AldinePress, a beautiful large octavo collection of Plautus in 1522, with prefatory

17Navagero, 1565. I use the version from a later edition of Terence, but have comparedit with that in the standard edition of Navageros writings (ibid., 1718). Francesco Asolano,today known as Francesco or Gianfrancesco Torresano, was brother-in-law of AldoManuzio (Aldus Manutius).

18Navagero, 5v: Durior est Plautus asperis quibusdam, atque obscuris verbis utitur: sicenim tunc loquebantur: non poterat ille alio, quam aetatis suae sermone uti. Longe

Terentius cultior, nihil in eo non lene, nihil non elegans: limatior tum scilicet Latina linguafacta est. . . . [I]llo Terentius parcior, ut nihil ab eo tamen, quod desiderari possit, relin-quatur. Hiant nonnumquam, neque satis cohaerent Plauti Comoediae: ita omnia Terentiiinter se nexa: ita ex omnibus unum quoddam conficitur, ut nihil aptius illius fabulis, nihilmagis fieri ad unguem possit.

19Gebwiler, a7v: Terentii comoedias non reiicio, verum quam Phoebus caeteris astrislumine, tam Plautus Terentium longe praecellit latinitate.





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praise for the extraordinary elegance and purity of his diction.20 Theclaim for the superiority of Terences art, however, had staying power.

For Navagero the comic art was one of things rather than words. Aquintessentially Plautine element was his clever wordplay and punning, afeature that left Terentians, like Navagero, cold: There are two kinds ofhumor: one is based on the thing, the other on the word. That which deals

with the thing is much more graceful and sober [gravis]; that of the wordis sometimes keen and elegant, but mostly it falls flat, and very readilydescends into buffoonery if not handled with moderation. Terence fre-quently uses the first kind, seldom the second; on the other hand, Plautus

rarely uses the first, but very often the second. . . . The charming thingsthat Plautus says can please once only; the more those of Terence areconsidered, the more they win us over. To sum up briefly, in the former wefind banter [dicacitas], in the latter the highest refinement [urbanitas].21

Horace, so often the guiding light of literary theory in this era, is probablyresponsible for the words/things dichotomy in this definition, following thefamous couplet in the Ars Poetica: The Socratic texts could show you thething, / and the words will readily follow when the thing is provided.22

Additionally, dicacitas, or the adjective dicax, is a term that Horace usesto describe both the satirical impulse and the satyr play, suggesting thatPlautuss (perceived) satiric tone pollutes the purity of his comedy.23 Intruth, Navagero is simply echoing a long-held opinion. A century earlier,in 1440, not long after Plautuss newly discovered plays could have been

20Asolano, *ii: incredibilem elegantiam, & dicendi puritatem.The edition containsa lexicon of obscure words.

21

Navagero, 6: Duo sunt facetiarum genera: in re alterum, alterum in verbo estpositum. multo id venustius, & gravius, quod re tractatur. acutum nonnunquam, & elegans,quod in verbo est: sed frigidum tamen plerunque est: & facilime in scurrilitatem delabitur,si quis sibi in eo non moderetur. Creber primo in genere, in secundo parcus Terentius:contra Plautus in primo rarus, in secundo frequentissimus. Hinc factum est, ut rudi fortassepopulo, & spectatoribus, quippe qui scurra saepius, quam poeta, delectentur, salsior sitPlautus visus: peritis certe auribus, & sapienti lectori, nihil Terentio festivius videri debet.Illius, quae lepida dicta sunt, placere semel possunt: huius, quo magis inspiciuntur, eovenustiora apparent. Risum ille persaepe, sed & saepe cachinnum movet: nunquam cachin-num Terentius. Atque ut uno omnia verbo complectar, in illo dicacitas, in hoc urbanitas

conspicitur maxima.22Horace, 156 (Epistulae2.3.31011): rem tibi Socraticae poterunt ostendere char-

tae, / verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur. The res/verba theme receivesWeinbergs attention at several points in the History, including his brief comments onNavageros letter (1961, 1:9192). Along withdicacitas, it is a subject of Ciceros commentson the ridiculous in De Oratore2.60, though comedy is not specifically mentioned here.

23Horace, 18 (Sermones1.4.8283), 153 (Epistulae2.3.225).





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known, the Ferrara scholar Angelo Decembrio mapped the canon of clas-sical literature. He based his ranking of Terence over Plautus on the same

premises heard in much of the sixteenth century. Terence uses ordinaryLatin [communi sermone], and Plautus is so full of jokes that one iscompelled to laugh too often, whereas Terence has just the right sort ofhumor, moderating in its effects.24

Over fifteen years after this defense of Terence came the Apologia inMarci Actii Plauti aliorumque poetarum et linguae Latinae calumniatoresbyFrancesco Florido (called il Sabino,151147), born, it should be noted,almost thirty years after Navagero. Following his studies at Rome, while

still in his teens Florido accompanied his patron Alberto Pio da Carpi tothe court of Francis I. He began legal studies at the University of Bolognaat age twenty-two, but two years later took up the study of Greek andRoman letters. Bologna had a long tradition favoring Plautus, from thetime of the scholars Antonio Urceo (Codro), Filippo Beroaldo, GiovanniBattista Pio, and Achille Bocchi in the decades just before and after 1500.25

Beroaldo finds in Plautus both a handbook of conduct and a verbalcosmos, mimetic and formally protean,while Pio seconds this view, call-

ing Plautus multiform and many-headed, a divine chameleon whosetext is an image of the world.26 Although it does not measure up to theearlier generations achievement, Floridos Apologia for Plautus and theLatin language testifies to its ferment at Bologna during his time there. Itprobably dates to the end of 1535, a year or so after he became interestedin literature, and is dedicated to the nephew of his patron. The secondedition of this book (1537) is the earliest to survive, while another appearedat Basel in 1540. Florido also served as tutor to Orazio Farnese, nephew of

Pope Paul III, wrote works on law, and defended Erasmuss Ciceronianusagainst Etienne Dolet, an ardent Terentian and, coincidentally, resident at

Lyon when the first edition of the Apologia was published there.27 Hisprinter, Sebastian Gryphius of Lyon, produced a widely-used, much-reprinted edition of Plautus, also in 1535, so perhaps theApologiawas seenas an investment to secure the acceptance of the Plautus edition among the

24Celenza, 59. For the reference to communi sermone,see ibid., n. 74.25The title of Achille BocchisApologia in Plautum(Bologna, 1508) is misleading, since

it is a defense of the textual practice in his teacher G. B. Pios edition of Plautus.26Chines, 12022. Raimondi, 251, praises Codros completion, or supplement, of

Aululariaas his happiest and most significant work.27See Pignatti; Sabbadini (the latter dates Floridos death as 1548). With the patronage

of the king of France, Florido also translated eight books of the Odyssey into Latin (1545),though the source remains silent regarding which eight.





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learned community of the Lyon region, which in the era of Francis I wouldhave included the court.

Early in theApologia, Florido mentions that A paper [libellus] againstPlautus was recently published, placed in front of the works of Terencehimself so that no one could be summoned as a witness against such libels,and Plautuss plays could from then on be erased from human memory.28

Quotations from Navagero prove that he is the critic whom Florido is spe-cifically answering, though, unlike Navagero, Dolet, and other Terentians,Florido maintains the need to respect both playwrights: anyone with amodicum of education should be persuaded that those who peevishly em-

brace Terence alone are thinking so reductively that they are banishingMarcus Actius [sic] Plautus, who did the best service to the Roman tongue,in whose mouth we are certain that the Muses spoke, and whom no one Iknow surpasses in advancing the Latin tongue. He who, we know, wasapproved by all the ancients until now, in such a way that the most learnedalways applauded Plautus, is cast out of all the academies like a barbarian.On the other hand, in this time when one may say or do nothing withoutcensure, others are showering down upon him other slanders, and hoping

that all the world will accept them, now that they have rendered mostwrongful judgment against this poet.29 Turning to specifics, Florido takesup the attacks on Plautuss bad Latin: I seem, moreover, to hear thosevoices crying out like a flock of sheep,he writes, that Plautuss Latin is fullof strange and obsolete words.30 The faults in the language are those of theearly period in which he lived, says Florido, but in his (Plautuss) time thelanguage was pure. Terence, Florido notes, sometimes used Plautine lan-guage, and he cites examples of supposedly obsolete diction that, according

to Cicero, was used by Marc Antony. Terence is easy to imitate, Florido

28Florido, 15: Libellus enim in Plautus nuper editus fuit, in fronte ipsius Terentiioperum collocatus, ut nemo tantis maledictis testis non adhiberetur, ex hominumquementibus Plautinae fabulae prorsus expungerentur.

29Ibid., 1314: Itaque ut ad pravam iudiciorum rationem redeamus, cum varii descriptoribus optimis multa decernant, hoc uno nemo vel mediocriter eruditus non com-moveri debet, quod cum aliqui solum Terentium petulantissime amplectantur, e remredegerint, ut Marcum Actium Plautum de lingua Romana optime meritum, cuius ore

Musas locutas fuisse haud dubi cognoscimus, quve nescio an alius quispiam Latinaelinguae magis profuerit, tanquam barbarum ex omnibus academiis ejectum, exulare com-pellunt, quem antiquis omnibus hactenus probatum fuisse scimus, ut quo semper doctioresfuerint, eo impensius Plautum laudarint: cum contra hoc tempore, quo nihil non impune& dicere & facere licet, alias alii calumnias in hunc congerant, & tunc maxime orbi seplacituros sperent, cum de hoc poeta pessime pronuntiarint.

30Ibid., 20: Audire porro illorum voces gregatim clamantium videor.





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continues, but not Plautus. Terence wrote elegantly, Plautus most el-egantly. Terence wrote six comedies quite charmingly, but Plautus

produced many comedies in the most delightful manner.31 All in all, inPlautus one may very readily discern learning, inventiveness, seriousness,comic energy, and the kind of strength that is worthy of a man. Not so inTerence, in whom, all things considered, one will never find any particularexcellence beyond a laudable propriety.

Florido questions the exclusive attention to Plautuss words at theexpense of his meaning, exclaiming, I will not be evasive, I think there issomething to declare openly on this matter, that as much fruit can be most

readily derived from six Plautine comedies as from all of Terence, a playfulreminder that Terence left only six comedies.32 As for the charge aboutPlautuss immorality, even if one avoids those parts of Plautus that areunsuitable for children, there is still so much more learning and Latin tobe discovered.33 The apologist also echoes a frequently-heard response tothe moral zealots: if reading were restricted to that which is appropriate forchildren, most of the canon of classical literature would have to be dis-carded. Floridos enthusiasm, his readiness to speak of his love for Plautus,

hints at an affectionate tone that is increasingly encountered among sup-porters of the playwright as the era progresses.34

Yet Florido had a blind spot. In quoting Navageros question What is there, in this author, that the reader in his chair cannot experienceand yet someone else can while clapping in the theater of the giddy popu-lace? Florido seems not to mind the Terentians denigration ofPlautuss appeal to theatergoers.35 Despite the widespread performances ofRoman comedy by this time in front of cultivated audiences, the humanists

tended to undervalue performed comedy in favor of comedy on the page.Navagero writes: Thus it happens that Plautus may seem more witty tothe rude populace and to spectators who more often delight in thebuffoon than the poet. Surely nothing must appear funnier than Terence

31Ibid., 2224, eleganter, elegantissime, perlepide, lepidissime.32Ibid., 22: Non equidem subterfugiam & in hac re quid sentiam ingenue profiteri:

tantundem quippe fructus ex sex Plauti Comoediis, quantum ex integro Terentio commo-

dissime percipi posse.33Ibid., 22: eruditius, Latinius denique excogitari.34Ibid., 38: Nec diffiteor tamen, sic me cupere Plautum ab omnibus amari(Nor do

I deny that I so desire that Plautus should be loved by everyone). The comment is maderegarding his desire that Terence should also be admired.

35Ibid., 22. Florido approximately quotes Navagero: quid est quod in hoc autoresedatus lector extra illum in teatro concitati vulgi plausum non probare possit?





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to educated ears and to the wise reader.36 Note Plautuss appeal to spec-tators(spectatoribus) and Terences to educated ears and the wise reader.

What can this suggest but an invidious comparison between read andperformed comedy, between drama as text and drama as theater? InNavageros assertion that Plautus thought that nothing else was requiredfor the comic poet than to provoke laughter in people,we read a kind ofantitheatrical prejudice that has been insufficiently discussed in the historyof this subject.37 In fact, classical scholars now believe that Plautuss Romanaudience was really rather sophisticated.38

Reference to the rude populace serves as a reminder of the class-

consciousness often underlying humanist declarations on this subject. Thedebates over Plautus evolved at a time when it mattered that, as BernardoPino da Caglia writes, Terence had been patronized by the noblest Romanslike Scipio and Laelius, while Plautus, who was, in fact, a slave and of lowclass, depended for his success on a plebeian audience.39 Juan Luis Vivesbelieved that, in his desire to provoke laughter, Plautus gave more freedomthan he should have to his slave characters.40 Bartolomeo Ricci charged that

when Plautus allowed his wit to wallow in scurrility it had value only for

a plebeian audience.41

Etienne Dolet draws a contrast between Plautuss

plebeian and servile witand Terences liberal style.42 It was in reactionto this elitism that Larivey, the French playwright, and Jacques Cahaignes,translator of the Aulularia, chose to cultivate more popular tastes by imi-tating Plautus on stage.43 If, as Riehle has said, the greatest affinity

36Navagero, 6: Hinc factum est, ut rudi fortasse populo, & spectatoribus, quippe quiscurra saepius, quam poeta, delectentur, salsior sit Plautus visus. Peritis certe auribus, &

sapienti lectori nihil Terentio festivius videri debet.37Ibid., 5v: nihil ille [Plautus] aliud propositum comico poetae credidit, quam populorisum movere.

38See Beacham, 4243; Handley.39Pino da Caglia, 2:640: Questa medesima considerazione fa parer belle e da genti-

luomo le comedie di Terenzo, essendo gistata opinione che fussero di Scipione e di Lelio,nobilissimi Romani, e poco gravi e da plebeo quelle di Plauto, il quale fu veramente schiavoe di vile condizione.

40McPherson, 27, quoting Vivess De Tradendis Disciplinis.41Ricci, 1:443: Nam sive risum quaeras creberrimum, quod populo maxime placere

intelligo, id ex Plauto sumas licebit (sed ne risum tamen excedat, erit tibi magnoperevedendum: sales enim et facetiae usque eo sales sunt, quoad intra legem suam continentur;cum vero ad scurrilitatem luxuriantur, tum plebeio tantum dignae sunt theatro).

42Dolet, A1v: Servile Plauti ingenium, & plebeium nimis / Terentius liberali stylo, &extra sales / Vulgares posito non vulgariter superat. Dolets verses also dismiss VolcatiusSedegitus in a manner recalling Navagero.

43Delcourt, 39.





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between Plautus and Shakespeare surely lies in the fact that both areconsistently aware of theperformativecharacter of comedy,such a choice

results from an understanding of the stage that was slow to penetrate someof the more academic literary minds of this period.44

The desire to treat comedy as a serious art may help explain thesereservations, as serious scholars, patronized by powerful aristocrats, thoughttwice about polluting the canon with clownish shows and vulgar farces thatdrew the laughter of ordinary people. Although the century of Erasmus andFranois Rabelais (14941553) is often seen as a period marked by therehabilitation of laughter, there remain the likes ofcommedia grave(serious

comedy) in the later Cinquecento and, in England, the plays ofShakespeares later career which featured mixed comedies like Measure for

Measure. Should there be limits to comic humor? Terentians would haveespecially applauded Alexander Leggatt, who says,Laughter, in so far as itis derisive and aggressive, works against the concord the comic ending triesto create.45 To this view, of course, Henri Bergson would have replied thatderision, in fact, preserves social harmony by undermining risible behav-ior.46

Antonio Minturno deserves credit as a major literary theorist whograsped the necessity of validating the role of laughter in comedy with asimple directness.Can there ever be a comic dramatist who does not jest?he asks. Joking and playing seem to me to take up the greatest part ofcomedy, as I will soon demonstrate.47 This centrality of laughter in histheory leads to a prolonged discussion, invoking Plautuss Casina, of theridiculous and its sources, such as deformity, scurrility (depravatio), andobscenity.48 Minturno suggests that there is, however, an art, a certainamount of careful planning [ratio],to be observed in the ridiculous, as wasexemplified in the Sicilian poet and humanist Pietro Gravina, known forhis iocunditas.49 A decade earlier Vincenzo Maggi had tried, in a shorttreatise, to compensate for Aristotles brevity in discussing the ridiculous

44Riehle, 271.45Leggatt, 137. Nelson, 17986, also discusses this tension between laughter and

harmony as a critical problem of comic theory.46See Bergson.47Minturno, 304: An comicus cuiquam is erit, qui non iocetur? Mihi vero videtur

comoediae partem maximam iocus ac ludus, ut mox ostendemus, occupare. He reports(ibid.) that Pomponio Gaurico, professor at Naples and his spokesman in book 4 oncomedy, maintained that comic action must be ridiculous.

48Ibid., 309.49Cerroni, 770. Gravina, a Neapolitan (ca. 14531528/29), does not seem to have

written comedies.





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more accurately, the laughable but Minturnos treatment in book 4 ofDe Poetais far more extensive.50 Minturno never disparages Plautus, and

his many examples of the ridiculous and its varieties show an intimateknowledge not only of Plautus, but also of Terence and Aristophanes.However, he sometimes singles out Terence for special esteem, and hesuggests that Plautus was sometimes defective inratio, as, for example, inhisAsinaria, an Oedipal comedy in which father and son pursue the same

woman. He refers to the moment when (in act 3, scene 3 of moderneditions) the young lover needs a large sum of money for his prostitute.51

Two of the fathers servants offer the youth a bag of money, but make him

beg for it: requiring him to touch their knees in the Roman sign ofsubmission, to kiss them, and then to carry one of them around the stageon his back. Indeed,Minturno writes, how silly, how crude is the comicaction in Asinaria, how devoid of any wit! When the young master, insupplication, by command grasps the knees of one servant, then carries theother like a horse. Terence was always more restrained about this sort ofthing.52 Class sensibility is also at stake here: recall Vivess objection toPlautuss freewheeling servants. An anonymous translation two decades

earlier had labeled the play a Comedia ridiculosa, but even a championof the ridiculous like Minturno drew the line at horsing around withservants.53

The De Poetaappeared at a time when the audience for Plautus wasexpanding on several fronts. The 1550s saw Spanish translations ofMilesGloriosusand Menaechmi, and, most significantly, the first appearance of

Joachim Camerariuss edition of Plautus, based on two highly-valued,hitherto unedited manuscripts: theCodex Vetus Camerariusand theCodex

Decurtatus. In the 1560s came Coplands English Amphitryo and Ba

f

sFrench translation of Miles, entitled Le Brave, the first translation of a

Roman comedy performed in France. In his 1568 edition Sambuco drawsa distinction between Plautus and Terence that becomes widely accepted:Although Terence may be elegant, pure, and polished, we may say thatPlautus is truly a comic playwright, if indeed we know what it is to write

50On MaggisDe ridiculis(1550), see Weinberg, 1961, 1:417.51See Plautus, 1:83

85 (Asinaria, 669

712).

52Minturno, 305: Ille vero ludus in Asinaria quam inepte, quam illiberaliter? Quamsine ulla mica salis? Cum herus adolescens servi alterius iussu genua supplex confricat,alterum quasi equus vehit. Moderatior in omni hoc genus Terentius fuit, cui tamen nondesunt, qui credant abfuisse id facultatis.

53The title page of the Comedia ridiculosa di Plauto intitolata Asinaria(Venice, 1530)advertises its performance in the monastery of Saint Stephen in Venice.





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a comedy or tell a tale not only using the hand and the ear, but also careful

planning.54 Sambucos enthusiasm may have infected his more famous

protg Justus Lipsius, an important advocate of Plautine style.

From the beginning of his rediscovery, Plautuss linguistic idiosyncra-

sies had made him an object of both deep philological interest and of the

kind of belittlement witnessed in Navageros comments on his harsh and

obscure words. J. C. Scaliger explicitly prefers Terences work on the

grounds of Terences speaking well.55 The idea, also dear to Ciceronians,

that earlier or later Latin vocabulary had no place in good prose falls under

the scrutiny of Henri Estienne in his De Latinitate Falso Suspecta, which

includes the lengthy De Plauti Latinitate Dissertatio, et ad Lectionem

Illius Progymnasma,specifically devoted to the language and achievement

of Plautus. Estiennes love for the comic poet is inherited. Although, hewrites, many who have undertaken this subject depend on the opinions ofHorace, Cicero, and other ancients, I wont pretend that I am makingsuch judgments based on ancient writers; the love with which I pursuePlautus is hereditary, since this comic dramatist, of all the Latin writers

except Cicero, was most dear to my father before he reached old age, and(insofar as was possible with the editions available at this time) mostfamiliar to him. It is surely appropriate that the French, more than anyother people, love Plautuss Latinity, because in many kinds of discoursethere is a stronger relationship between his language and French than anyother; indeed, one may hear many expressions that are almost the same inboth languages.56 Both great lexicographers, the Estiennes, father and son,played an important role in improving Plautuss stature in FranceHenri

with the tract under discussion, and his father, Robert, with the handsome

54Sambuco, a33v: Sit quamvis elegans, purus, et politus Terentius: Plautum tamenvere comicum esse dicemus: siquidem quid sit comoediam scribere, aut fabulam dare, nonmodo digitis & aure, verum multo magis recta ratione callemus.

55Scaliger, 148a: Why then do we prefer him [Terence] to Plautus? Because with us,nowadays, the highest pursuit is for speaking well (Cur igitur nos pluris hunc quamPlautum facimus? Propterea quod summum nobis nunc studium est bene loquendi).

56Estienne, 36667: Verum ut talia de vetustis scriptoribus iudicia missa faciam,

dissimulare nolo, haereditarium mihi eum quo Plautum prosequor, amorem esse: quum hiccomicus patri meo, antequam ad ingravescentem aetatem pervenisset, omnium Latinorumscriptorum post Ciceronem & charissimus, & (quantum licebat per ea quae tum tempo-ris suppetebant exemplaria) notissimus fuerit. Gallos certe prae quibuslibet aliis populisLatinitatem Plauti amare par est, quod in plurimis loquendi generibus maior sit eiussermoni cum Gallico quam cum alio ullo affinitas: & quidem ita voces etiam pleraequepropemodum eaedem utrobique audiantur.





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edition of Plautuss Comoediae XX, which Robert published in Paris in1530, a year after his edition of Terence.

Henri declares that he is writing his defense of Plautuss language andhis Progymnasma or introduction both for students and for teachersunfamiliar with Plautus. Together they must contend with those who,seeking to avoid the work of reading Plautuss unfamiliar language, readily

join his detractors, sometimes echoing Horaces opinion as a cover.57

People, he suggests, who say that the language is too obsolete to understandsimply reveal that they have never read a single page of Plautus, while those

who claim the text of the plays is unreadable because of errors are often

using outdated early editions.58 To those who always mouth the verses ofHorace and disparage the praises of this comic playwright, and do notknow any other tune, I could respond with the words of Varro, Cicero, andcertain others, or oppose their testimonies against the disparagement ofhim [Horace] to whom they lend their ears. And similarly I could bring upvarious opinions of ancient authors all but contradicting other authors thus implying that the customary game of citing ancient authorities insupport of particular preferences is specious.59 This is followed with a sly

reminder, implicitly aimed at purist Ciceronians, that Cicero himself lovedPlautus. Estienne adopts the largely unconventional tactic of collecting thevarious linguistic and textual misreadings that have given Plautus his un-deserved reputation, so much at odds with the esteem in which he was heldin antiquity. One of the many examples that occupy the bulk of the essaymay serve here: some texts ofPseudolus (line 743) have the title charactersay, Bravo, wittiest Charinus, now you gladden [iam beas] me in myscheme. Instead of iam beas, Estienne says, Adrian Turnebus, aman very learned in every way, substitutes, from an ancient manuscript,lamberas, and adds that according to Festus lamberareis to tear apart or tomangle, so that the servant (Pseudolus) is saying that he is beaten at his ownscheme.60 This better fits the context of the play. To absolve the dramatist

57Ibid., 363.58Ibid., 364.59Ibid., 365: [I]llis qui Horatianos versus, quibus huius comici laudibus obtractat,

semper in ore habent, nec aliam cantilenam norunt, Varronis, Ciceronis et quorundamaliorum verbis respondere possem, vel potius horum testimonia illi cui aurem praebent

obtrectationi opponere: ac veterum scriptorum aliis itidem scriptoribus diversa et modo nonrepugnantia iudicia proferre.For Ciceros praise of Plautus, see De Officiis1.104.

60Estienne, 38182: Euge pellipide Charine, me meo ludo iam beas.Hic enim proiam beasex vet. Cod. reponiturlamberas, a viro undequaque doctissimo Adriano Turnebo:qui addit, Lamberare, autore Festo, esse scindere atque laniare: ut servus se suo ludoverberari dicat.In fact,lamberasis the word used in modern texts ofPseudolus, see volume2 of Plautus (Pseudolus, 743).





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of carelessness, Estienne aims to reconstruct the past century of textualscholarship on Plautus, since the earliest, deficient printed editions. It did

not hurt that Turnebus (also Adrien Turnbe), professor of Greek in Parisuntil his death in 1565, was French and, therefore, as Estienne suggests,supposedly closer than non-French scholars to the spirit of Plautuss lan-guage.

3. H E I N S I U S A N D T H E FA I L U R E O F C O M E D Y T O B EM O R E L I K E T R A G E D Y

Two events from the first decade of the seventeenth century reveal thedistance traveled by Plautus and the Plautus-Terence debate since 1500:the first, a festive Plautus edition; the second, a treatise on Horaces criti-cism of the two Roman dramatists that, in part, reacts to the esteem newlyaccorded Plautus over the previous half-century. The voluminous prefatorymaterial in Johann Philipp Pareuss (15761648) 1610 edition of Plautusincludes a dedicatory letter to the Elector Palatine, whose library now heldthe chief manuscripts used by Camerarius; commendations of both the

edition and editor by eleven learned men; Pareus

spraemonitio(foreword)to the reader; his account of Plautuss life and works, quoting the usualclassical authorities; and a compilation of ancient and modern authoritiespraising Plautus, the latter group including Frederic Taubmann, bothScaligers, Melanchthon, Camerarius, Sadoleto, Lipsius, Isaac Casaubon,Henri Estienne, Paolo Manuzio, and Sturm: an obviously tramontani-heavy cast, owing to the contributions of Northern humanists such asCamerarius and Taubmann.61 Special mention goes to Janus Gruter (myThales), who would have his own edition of Plautus published in 1621.62

Pareus himself published an important Lexicon Plautinum in 1614. Fur-thermore, each play in the edition is generally introduced by a testimonial,a sort of publishers blurb, from an ancient or modern authority. Theseoften derive from two earlier editors who had written their own briefappreciations of each play, Camerarius and Janus Dousa.63 Truculentus, a

61Van der Poel, 179, n. 4 (my translation), explores Plautus s significant influence onLipsiuss writing style, citing the following from Lipsiuss Epistolicae Quaestiones 5.25

(1577): For it has come to my attention that they say he sounds more like Plautus thanCicero.If only they spoke truth, for I would like that. I do know that I am writing letters,not speeches (Iam enim is sermo aures meas tetigit. Et Plautum, inquiunt, potius sapitquam Ciceronem. Utinam vero dicerent! Nam hoc volui. Epistolas scio me sic scribere, nonOrationes).

62Pareus, **4.63Dousas Plautus edition of 1589 was reprinted at Frankfurt the same year (1610) that





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comedy noted for its portrayal of sexual misbehavior, receives five suchblurbs. OfAmphitryo, J. C. Scaliger says it is a tragicomedy in which the

dignity and greatness of the characters are intermingled with the lowlinessof comedy, while Adrien Turnbe claims that Plautuss Amphitryo hasboth the kind of dialogue and subtlety of humor that can dispel darknessfrom the reader.64 For Lipsius, Casina is that delightful play. AulusGellius says, Pseudolusis a very funny play, and Camerarius adds, Theplot of Pseudolus is varied and simply wonderful. When it comes toPlautus, Dousa is typically animated: I dont know how much Plautusrejoiced in hisPseudolus: I know this, that for a long time I have read none

of that poets comedies with equal pleasure, nor would I imagine that Icould easily put it aside. So it should be no wonder that Cicero liked it somuch. For that comedy (to say much in a few words) is the gem ofPlautuss plays.65 It is refreshing to hear the Dutch scholar (Dousa) testifyto his own experience of a play, rather than appeal, as is so often done atthis time, to the opinion of other authorities. While the collective effect ofall the comments Pareus has gathered makes an appeal to authoritativeopinion, the frequency of relatively recent testimonials suggests that con-

temporary opinion on this ancient carries unprecedented weight.With all this acclaim, the support for Terence in Horaces literaryobservations still resounded among those who found theArs Poeticato bethe starting point for all critical discourse. Faced with the authority ofHorace, a Plautine like Lipsius could only shrug, signing off on a letterchampioning Plautus, There remains the judgment of Horace, which, Ipray, may be passed over for the sake of Horace.66 Horace does castigatePlautus several times, but he refers directly to Terence only once: Plautushurries along like his model, Epicharmus of Sicily. Caecilius wins the prize

Pareuss appeared. HisCenturiatus, sive Plautinarum explanationum libri IV(Leiden, 1587)is his longest work of philology, and his letters quote Plautus more frequently than any otherauthor: Heesakkers, 150. On Camerariuss Plautine prefaces, see Strk.

64Pareus, A1: Tragicomoediam . . . in qua personarum dignitas atque magnitudo Co-moediae humilitati admistae sunt; Amphitruo Plauti & genera loquendi, & iocorumargutias habet, quae tenebras offundere lectoribus pussunt.

65Ibid., 197: lepida illa fibula; ibid., 531: Pseudolus comoedia festivissima;Pseudoli argumentum est varium, & plane mirificum; Quam Pseudolo sua Plautus

gavisus fuerit, nescio: hoc scio, nullam me ex Poetae illius Comoediis iampridem aequelubentem pelligisse, neque animo unde defaecatione me discessisse existimem. ita ut mi-randum non sit, eam Ciceroni tantopere complacitam. Est enim Comoedia illa (ut multasane paucis eloquar) Ocellus Fabularum Plauti.

66Lipsius, 249: Superest Horatii iudicium. Quod, obsecro, Horatii caussa, omitatur.Earlier he says, Terence offends in nothing except that he does not offend (Terentiusnihil peccat, nisi quod non peccat): ibid., 248.





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for dignity, Terence for art.67 Renaissance champions of Terence, not tomention those of Horace, invested considerable energy in what Horace

means here by art. The contribution to this effort by another Dutchhumanist, Daniel Heinsius, in The Dissertation on Horaces Judgment of Plautus and Terence, began in the first decade of the seventeenth centuryas a long footnote, but in 1618 took the shape of a developed treatise(fourteen pages in its modern edition) as part of his edition of Terence.

It is informative to consider this essay in the context of the authorslonger and more influential De Tragoediae Constitutione(1611, translatedasOn Plot in Tragedy), which urged precepts that would come to dominate

the aesthetics of drama in the age of Racine, and which played a criticalrole in mediating between, on the one hand, sixteenth-century Italian

Aristotelians (especially Robortello) and, on the other, seventeenth-centuryFrench classicists. The reader of De Tragoediae encounters a surprisingnumber of opinions about Plautus and Terence for a book on tragedy, suchas the criticism of Plautus for his dependence on a deus ex machina inresolving the plot ofAmphitryo.68 In chapter 14, Heinsius quotes an arrayof passages from Terence to advance a contention that his language is

grounded in the character of the speakers (really character types): theagreeable man, the wrathful man, the lucky adolescent, the old man inadversity, and so forth. His one specimen from Plautus in this chaptersupposedly exemplifies the failure to fit discourse with character. Theexample certainly does not speak for itself. The speaker is Therapontigonus,the miles gloriosus in Curculio: Tis now in no common rage I ragefullystride on, / But in that selfsame rage in which I have learned so well to rootup cities.69 The puffed-up ego, the redundant phrasing, the claim ofpersonally laying waste entire cities all of this seems boastful enough andsilly enough to fit this character. Elsewhere, Plautus is instanced amongill-advised users of Grecisms in Latin.70

TheDissertatiomay have begun as a rumination on Horaces views ofthe Roman comic dramatists, but the intervening work on tragedy appar-ently led Heinsius to expand his inquiry into the Plautus-Terence debatealong the lines of Aristotelian stylistic and structural principles. In fact,

67Horace, 130 (Epistulae2.1.58

59).68Heinsius, 1971, 64, 68.69Ibid., 87: Non ego nunc mediocri incedo iratus iracundia, / sed eapse illa,

qua obsidionem facere condidici oppidis (The English translation is by Sellin andMacManmon). See Plautus 1:137 (Curculio, 53334).

70For example, Plautuss use ofboat, borrowed from the Greek verb boao, cry: seeHeinsius, 1971, 116.





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despite the Horatian subject, the Aristotelian and Platonic concerns of theCinquecento frequently color the pages of the Dissertatio. Like the Italian

Aristotelians, Heinsius is preoccupied with plot in dramatic imitation:The chief thing in comedy and tragedy is arrangement.71 He finds spe-cific fault, as had Navagero, with Plautuss carelessness regarding plot. Atthe end ofAmphitryo, the dramatist settles for adeus ex machina, which isalways the Poets last refuge, since he cannot untie the knot that he himselfhas tied, a matter that he has handled with too little foresight.72Amphitryoalso fails in its temporal unity because Alcmena conceives and gives birthin the same play.Captiviis similarly defective, since a character is supposed

to have journeyed to Elis and back between acts 2 and 4.73 Heinsius notes:In Terence, to whom alone Horace attributes artistry, there is none of this:all is done with judgment, reason, care, and deliberation.74

If, Heinsius maintains, the chief aim of comedy should be to teach anddelight, the ridiculous must hold a limited priority in comic art: He whothinks to provoke laughter distorts his voice, just as he does his face.75

Nearly all the schools of antiquity judged laughter itself unworthy of thewise man: Just as vinegar cannot be good unless the wine has gone bad,

things that are honest and true cannot arouse laughter.

76

Referring to thereluctant Plautus-lover Saint Jerome, and to Plutarchs unfinished essaycomparing Aristophanes and Menander, he applauds the arrival of NewComedy in the ancient world because its best practitioners, Menander andTerence, unlike Aristophanes and Plautus, aimed chiefly to know and toimitate human behavior. The followers of Socrates were accustomed toengage in wit (chareintizesthai) rather than in buffoonery (gelotopoein).77

71

Heinsius, 1996, 82: Praecipuum in comoedia & tragoedia, est dispositio.

72Ibid., 83: quod est ultimum refugium Poetae, cum [Gr.] ten desin, hoc est, nodum,quem ligavit ipse, solvere potest, & rem parum provide tractavit.

73Ibid., 84, 85.74Ibid., 84: In Terentio, cui soli artem tribuit Horatius, nihil tale: omnia com judicio,

omnia cum ratione, omnis circumspecte, omnia com cura.75Ibid., 79: Ac idcirco vocem corrumpit, plane ut faciem, qui movere risum cogitat.

The context supports vocem here as voice rather than as word. The frequent use ofcorrumpere (corrupt, here translated as distort) in the text reinforces the moral senseunderlying Heinsiuss theory of comedy. Thus, on the style and sentiments of Aristophanes

comedies, he says, Laughter on its own makes them very defective (ibid., 80: Quossponte risus causa effert corruptissimos).

76Ibid., 79: Denique ut acetum, nisi vinum sit corruptum, ita quae sincera sunt &vera, risum excitare non possunt.Heinsius then quotes Quintilian 6.3.89, to the effect that

witty expression depends on saying things other than what is correct and true (ibid.:aliter quam est rectum verumque).

77Ibid.





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Examples of what he has in mind (the treatise provides specific passages forthese observations) include the flatulence jokes inCurculio. InTrinummus

a con-man gives an absurd description of the length of his name and tellsa silly tale about going up to heaven in a fishing boat. There is alsofrigid,or tiresome, wordplay, like the following fromStichus: the evil that is theleast of many evils is the least evil.78 Sixty years earlier Trissino hadclassified Plautuss comedy as ridiculous, Terences as moral.79 Heinsiusextends this dichotomy to conclude that since Plautuss comedies are bynature ridiculous, they lead to a moral deterioration of his art: Now as wecome to speak of charm, wit, grace, and beauty, almost all these are cer-

tainly canceled out by the ridiculous, just as virtue is canceled out byexcess.80 Recalling the class-consciousness of sixteenth-century Terentiansis the view that laughter is mostly to the liking of the less respectableburghers, such as plebs and spongers: thus a correct comedy should tonedown, if not eliminate, the sort of humor that appeals to the lower classes. 81

In the late seventeenth century, Ren Rapin similarly declared thatPlautus, who studied more to please the common People,made his char-acters outlandishly wicked, but Terence, who would please the better Sort,

confined himself within the bounds of Nature, and he represented Viceswithout making them either better or worse.82 In Restoration England,Laurence Echard had been reading Rapin who had likely been readingHeinsius, or even Navagero when he proposed that Plautuss lines, bytheir Trifling and Quibbling, appear to have been calculated for the Mob;Echard goes on to compare Plautuss plays to comedies of his own era,

which too oftendegenerate into Farce, which seldom fail[s] of pleasing theMob.83

Yet moral edification and serious audience-appeal constitute only apart of the Horatian agenda in the literary epistles. Heinsius also focuses on

78Ibid, 91: ex malis multis malum quod minimumst, id minimest malum.79Trissino, in Trattati, 2:59.80Heinsius, 1996, 89: Jam ut ad lepores, sales, gratias, & venustates veniamus; certum

est, fere omnes eas tolli a ridiculo, quemadmodum ab excessu tolitur virtus.81Heinsius, quoted in Meter, 111.82Rapin, 22122. In many ways this comparison assimilates the whole sixteenth-

century Terentian case against Plautus, as does, for example, Rapins statement (ibid., 224)that Terences plots are more naturally unraveled than those ofPlautus; as those ofPlautusare more natural than those ofAristophanes.

83Echard, a3. Over a century later the class argument about Plautus still survived. SeeSchlegels pronouncement, 190: the bold, coarse style of Plautus, and his famous jests,betray his intercourse with the vulgar; in that of Terence we discern the traces of goodsociety.





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the theory now called verisimilitude, the idea that the poem and all its partsshould be true to life. He sees Horace as especially in accord with Aristotles

premise regarding mimesis, and argues that if dramatic poetry imitates life,so should comedy. The mimetic theory of comedy would not go unchal-lenged today, but was holy writ in the seventeenth century:

For this reason, as witness Aristotle, all poets who imitate, as do all painters,portray people as the same as, or better, or worse than they are. Plautusrepresents slaves as worse, Terence as the same, never better; but he presentssome whores as the same, some better. The same, for example, Thais; better,for example, Bacchis. But Plautus always presents parasites as worse and morevoracious like Dossenus [a trickster type in the Atellan farces of south Italy,mentioned by Horace], never better; he attended to such characters almostexclusively, falling flat with the others. Terentian Phormio is clearly admi-rable, and Gnatho too, in his character type. Because Plautine characters aimat laughter, they lose versimilitude in language and thoughts. Now languagesuited to character, which is called ethical, requires three virtues: fairness,simplicity, and truthfulness; and this places before our eyes that which isinnate and instilled in each person. But the ridiculous is violent or turbulent,because it is corrupt, as we said above, and is prompted by corrupt causes. Thecharacter-suited language, because it is like nature, pleases gently when inamazement we see the image of life or of different ages or nations on the stage.Clearly, just as a picture that departs from the truth and portrays a foot-longnose or a contorted face provokes laughter, so one that is truthful is delight-ful.84

First, Heinsius applies the familiar ut pictura poesis (as in painting, so inpoetry) formula in a curiously un-Aristotelian proposition. As is well-

known, Aristotle had said that characters in a comedy are usually worse

84Heinsius, 1996, 8788: Quare cum omnes qui imitantur poetae, instar pictorum,Aristotele teste, aut similes, aut pejores aut meliores quam sunt, exprimant; Plautus servospejores, Terentius similes, numquam meliores; meretrices vero partim similes, partim me-liores introducit. Similes, ut Thaidem; meliores, ut Bacchidem. Parasitos vero semperdeteriores & voraciores Plautus, numquam meliores; ut & Dossenus, qui hos solos prope-modum curabat, in personis reliquisekpipten. Phormio Terentianus plane est admirandus:& in suo genere Gnatho. Plautini quia risum quaerunt, veritatem & sermone & sententiis

amittunt. Tres virtutes enim sermo postulat moratus, quem ethikon vocant. Aequitatem,Simplicitatem, & Veritatem. Quaeto endiatheton, & quod unicuique est insitum, ob oculosponit. Ridiculum vero violentum est. Quia corruptum est, ut supra dicebamus, & a cor-ruptis causis movetur. Moratum quia simile est naturae, leniter delectat: cum imaginemvitae, aetatum singularum, ac nationum, cum stupore in scena videmus. Plane ut picturaquae a vero recedit, & cubitalem exprimit nasum, aut distortum os, risum movet: similisdelectat.





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than those in common life, but Heinsius, having studied Robortelli andother Italian Aristotelians, suggests they can be the same as ordinary people

or even better. Making characters less vile concurs with the shift towardromantic comedy andcommedia gravein the later sixteenth century. Writ-ing in the 1580s, Bellisario Bulgarini insists that the characters of comedy

were to be good men of middling condition,rather than wicked.85 OnceHeinsius affirms that Because Plautine characters aim at laughter, theylose versimilitude in language and thoughts, he can infer that, notbeing truly mimetic, Plautuss plays must belong to the merely ridiculous.Heinsius next introduces the idea of language suited to character(sermo

moratus), with moratus, rather like the Greekethikos, relating to behavior,not morality (ethosis, of course, usually rendered as character in trans-lations of the Poetics, though this translation can be misleading).86 Theconcept is discussed at length in On Plot in chapter 14 as discourserooted in character87 reminding us of Heinsiuss typically Aristotelian,formal links between tragedy and comedy. But the phrase also involves theruling principle of Horatian decorum: characters should act as befits themand their types. With what follows, Heinsius sets up a contrast between the

violentridiculous, and the decorous language that pleas[es] gently: thatis, between the effects of buffoonery and the effects of nature. The lastsentence from this part of theDissertatiotakes us back to the pictura-poesistheme, with a spirited defense of mimesis on the stage.

If theory could be proved to affect practice, Heinsius could be blamedfor the decline of comedy (whether real or imagined) in the late seventeenthcentury. What comic dramatist would not have felt hemmed in by thedemand that characters must be modeled on familiar and recognizable

people?

In comedy and in romance,

says Northrop Frye,

the story seeksits own end instead of holding the mirror up to nature.(Frye later tells anamusing story about a doctor who was unable to enjoy a performance ofTwelfth Nightbecause it was a biological impossibility that boy and girltwins could resemble each other so closely.)88 The same fallacy underliesHeinsiuss criticism that the Menaechmus twins would not have looked

85Weinberg, 1961, 1:599.86Lewis and Short define moratusas adapted to the manners or character of a person

or to the subject.Compare Quintilian 2:85 (4.2.64): in oratione morata(in character-istic speech); Horace, 156 (Epistulae, 3.2.319): recte morata fabula (in which thecharacters are accurately drawn). In Robertello, 521, the phrase oratio moratais used. Theeditors of Heinsius, 1971, 95, n.1, cite Plutarch, ethikoton lexeos eidosin Moralia79B.

87Heinsius, 1971, 8694.88Frye, 8, 18.





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alike because the clothing of Sicilians and Macedonians at that time dif-fered greatly, or Castelvetros complaint that inAmphitryocharacters swear

by Hercules before the hero was born.89 Like their beloved Plautus, thegreat comic dramatists of the Renaissance Machiavelli, Shakespeare,

Jonson, and, to extend the period a bit further, Molire all enjoyed theliberating impulses of comic license.

Heinsius, whose early patron was the Plautine scholar and enthusiastJanus Dousa, makes it clear from the start that he is of two minds on thissubject: All will be said, however, following Horaces judgment ratherthan our own; we indeed love Plautus so much that we rarely think to put

him down from our hands.90 His conclusion repeats the point: Let thesewords have been said on behalf of Horace, the greatest of men, rather thanagainst Plautus, whom we love, take up, delight in, and read even moreoften than Terence himself.91 Heinsius is perhaps too honest not to admitthat his feelings are at odds with his theory. This kind of literary affectionfor, if not seduction by, Plautus is noted in Florido, Estienne, Lipsius,Dousa, and others, but not in such a strong supporter of Horatian criti-cism. Implicit in these moments of the treatise is an ambivalence, a tension

between formal theory and subjective response that remains unresolved. Inthe 1629 revision of the Dissertatio the one that Ben Jonson knewHeinsius deletes the clause and read even more often than Terencehimself.92

4 . P L A U T U S AC C O U N T E D T H E B E S T F O R C O M E D Y

In concluding his history of Renaissance Italian criticism, Bernard Weinbergobserves that Aristotelian poetics led to a revolution in ways of discussing

tragedy, but left no new topics or criteria for the criticism of comedy, whichwas forced simply to rely on the ample discussion of comedy stretchingback to the Middle Ages.93 Essentially rhetorical, this tradition emergesfrom an approach that is oblivious to comedys theatrical dimension. Thediscovery of Aristotles lost treatise on comedy would have shifted the

whole landscape. But while Neo-Aristotelian attempts to formulate comictheory remained mostly convention-bound and even simplistic, it could

89Heinsius, 1996, 84; Castelvetro, 2:263.90Heinsius, 1996, 78: Omnia autem ex Horatii potius judicio, qui profecto ita

Plautum amamus, ut e manibus raro deponendum putemus, dicentur, quam nostro.91Ibid., 92: Haec pro viro maximo Horatio sint dicta; non tamen contra Plautum.

Quem amamus suscipimus, diligimus, etiam saepius ipso Terentio legimus.92The deletion is noted in Heinsius, 1996, 92, n. 34. On Jonson, see Sellin, 14953.93Weinberg, 1961, 2:952.





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also be said that the neglect of comedy in the Poeticspotentially liberatedit from Aristotles authority (which arguably had no salutary effect on

Renaissance tragedy in Italy). Comedy, however, flourished on the Italianand French stages during the headiest years of Aristotelian theory.94 Thehistory of the concurrent critical fortunes of Plautus and Terence revealsthat they greatly enriched the conversation on comic theory during theRenaissance; practical criticism of these playwrights always took up largerissues. Weinberg says that Robertello cited the usages and practices of

Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence, and derived from them further clari-fication and improvement of his precepts:95 he was not alone in doing so.

Questions about the ridiculous What is it? How important is it? remained in fruitful irresolution, as did the related questions about pro-moting or restraining laughter, with its attendant surprise and wonder.96

Regarding the social dimension of comedy, some worried that, because itappealed so readily to the lower classes, it deprived serious spectators oftheir dignity. Thoughtful critics also gained from the conflicts betweentheir own responses to plays and those of classical authorities. The practiceof comic artists from Machiavelli to Molire suggests the influence of a

Plautine comic impartiality,the sense that nothing is sacred in the comicworld: neither married love, nor romance, nor political or religious author-ity.97 This recklessness accounts for much of the unease discernible inhumanist critics. Is comedy then subversive? Echoing Ciceros metaphor ofcomedy as a mirror, Luther appreciated the nasty behavior of some ofPlautuss characters because they thereby constituted a mirror ofmans morality.98 He would seem to imply, as do Heinsius and otherTerentians, that comedic characters are not abnormally base and vile, as inthe Poetics, but are imitations of ordinary people. Others pointed out badbehavior onstage to discredit Plautus, and even Terence, for the Christianreader. Everywhere it is observed that Plautuss plots violate principles ofdecorum (for example, genre purity) and verisimilitude. These principles,carried over from Aristotles statements on tragedy, were applied to comedydespite the nagging suspicion for example, in Heinsiuss final ambiva-lence about Plautus that comedy could succeed without them. Finally,

94See Lebgue, 22, on the midcentury craze in France for Italian comedy to the neglectof tragedy.

95Weinberg, 1961, 2:808.96On surprise and wonder in Renaissance comic theory, see Calder.97The concept of comic impartiality originates with Delcourt, 1962 and 1964.98Riehle, 16, who notes that young Luther, on entering the monastery, kept only two

of his books, Virgil and Plautus.





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Plautus raised questions about the language of comedy and its place withrespect to the (supposedly) more important elements of plot and character.

Is comic language always a means or can it be an end in itself? Wordplayfor its own sake especially troubles the priorities of Aristotelian theory.

Besides touching on these theoretical points, the Plautus debates wouldseem otherwise implicated in the history of comedy. They spill over intovernacular comedy of the Renaissance, but scholars have only rarely incor-porated them into historical accounts of the field. In English literaryscholarship, where studies of Roman comedys influence have a rich his-tory, there is more to be discovered about the reception of ancient comedy

and its effect on European imitations. One consequence of Plautuss entryon the scene was to posit a model of classical (therefore, significant) com-edy that violated Terentian decorum, bringing the highest standards ofcomic art uncomfortably close to those of low, clownish, popular comedy.Plautus signified that perhaps mere laughter could constitute the chief endof comedy. At the beginning, English stage comedy inclined toward theTerentian: it was Terences braggart soldier, not Plautuss, who found his

way into Udalls Ralph Roister Doister. Sir Philip Sidney (155486), who

modeled his five-partArcadiaon perceived Terentian structure, was surelythinking about the debate over Plautus when he contrasted the comedy oflaughter with the better sort: the comedy of delight. But our comediansthink there is no delight without laughter; which is very wrong, for thoughlaughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight, as thoughdelight should be the cause of laughter . . . nay, rather in themselves theyhave, as it were a kind of contrariety; for delight we scarcely do, but inthings that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature;

laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselvesand nature. Delight hath a joy in it, either permanent or present. Laughterhath only a scornful tickling.99 When John Lyly says he sought in hiscomedy to move inward delightand soft smiling, not loud laughing,itis true, as numerous critics have said, that he could have been readingSidney, but by this time the idea was a European commonplace.100

A decade after Sidney, Francis Meres voiced a younger generationsviewpoint about the best,saying in his Palladis Tamia, As Plautus and

Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines,so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for

99Sidney, 78.100Dillon, 52, citing unnamed numerous critics: she quotes from Lylys Blackfriars

prologue to Sappho and Phao.





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the stage.101 In linking Shakespeare to Plautus, Meres reminds us of what

some critics have judged a fault in both their fondness for puns, or for

comedy of words over things. Shakespeares quintessential comedian Feste

calls himself his mistresss corrupter of words in Twelfth Night3.1.35.

Ben Jonson began his dramatic career as a Plautine in The Case Is Altered

(based on Aulularia and Captivi), but much later sounds a Terentian-

Horatian note in Timber, probably reflecting his own bitter experiences

with the popular audience: They [the multitude] love nothing that is right

and proper. The farther it runs from reason or possibility with them the

better it is. He appropriates Heinsiuss vinegar-wine analogy to demon-

strate the corrupting influence of laughter.102 Yet Jonson is unwilling to

fault Plautus entirely, quoting Varro (as had many humanists before him)

that he was a prince of letters and elegancy in the Roman language.103A

commonplace about the two major English Renaissance dramatists held

that Shakespeare, though he was eminently gifted by nature, wanted art,

while Jonson, in his learned sock, was the consummate practitioner of

art. Such comparisons may well originate in Plautus-Terence discussions:

Florido is not the first or last to say,

On the whole, as Terence stands outto some extent in painstaking effort, in Plautus certainly there is

more nature.104 But by Jonsons time, the vigor of public theater in the

European Renaissance had completely vindicated Plautus. The early

Baroque-era French practice of staging comedy favored Plautus because of

his wider repertory of comic themes, and especially because of a vision ofman that is more ample and more impartial than that of Terence, as aFrench scholar writes. By 1657, she adds, even a humanist Terentian like

101Meres, 2:31718. This is immediately followed with the paraphrase of a passagefrom Quintilian (quoting Varro) often used by Plautines: the Muses would speake withPlautuss tongue if they would speak Latin: so I say that the Muses would speak withShakespeares fine filed phrase if they would speak English.They were also fond of quotingCaesars barb from Suetoniuss Life of Terence,that Terence was half-Menanderlackinginvis comica (comic power).

102Jonson, 644; and ibid: In short, as Vinegar is not accounted good, untill the winebe corrupted: so jests that are true and naturall, seldom raise laughter, with the beast, the

multitude.See also Heinsius, 1996, 79, quoted above in n. 72. Jonson initiates, but soonabandons, a Heinsius-like comparison of Plautus and Terence, on the grounds of Aristotle ssupposed principle that the moving of laughter is a fault in Comedie: see Jonson, 643.Sellin notes Heinsiuss influence on Jonson at several points.

103Jonson, 641.104Florido, 39: Ad summam, ut cura Terentius aliquatenus praestet, in Plauto quidem

plus est naturae.





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the Abb dAubignac, had to admit that Plautus always met with moresuccess on the stage.105

Although neither playwright flourishes onstage today, an annual playfestival continues in Plautuss hometown of Sarsina, where, in 2001,Pasolinis Il vantone, a translation of Miles Gloriosus, was performed.Plautuss Pseudolus, Casina, and Mostellariacame together in 1962 as AFunny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which was successful onstage and screen. No such luck for Terence, despite his unique legacy in thehistory of comic plot construction and romantic and sentimental comedy.

When Segal claims that around 1900 Terence was still high on a pedestal

but [a]t mid-century the pendulum swung in the opposite direction,hedoes not seem to realize that by then the larger pendulum had beenswinging in Plautuss direction f

encountering plautus in the renaissance.a humanist debate on comedy

Documents

encountering plautus

meritsof plautus

humanist debate

renaissance quarterly

medieval plautus manuscripts

discussions of comedy

classical comedy

jstor terms