It is thus he feasts his senses with his treasure: and the very ground in which it is hidden is accounted hallowed:

But the most celebrated imitation of the Aulularia is Moliere’s Avare, one of the best and most wonderful imitations ever produced. Almost nothing is of the French dramatist’s own invention. Scenes have been selected by him from a number of different plays, in various languages, which have no relation to each other; but every thing is so well connected, that the whole appears to have been invented for this single comedy. Though chiefly indebted to Plautus, he has not so closely followed his original as in the Amphitryon. One difference, which materially affects the plots of the two plays and characters of the misers, is, that Euclio was poor till he unexpectedly found the treasure. He was not known to be rich, and lived in constant dread of his wealth being discovered. When any thing was said about riches, he applied it to himself; and when well received or caressed by any one, he supposed that he was ensnared. Harpagon, on the other hand, had amassed a fortune, and was generally known to possess it, which gives an additional zest to the humour, as we thus enter into the merriment of his family and neighbours; whereas the penury of Euclio could scarcely have appeared unreasonable to the bystanders, who were not in the secret of the acquired [pg 114]treasure. Moliere has also made his miser in love, or at least resolved to marry, and amuses us with his anxiety, in believing himself under the necessity of giving a feast to his intended bride; which is still better than Euclio’s consternation at the supper projected by his intended son-in-law. Euclio is constantly changing the place where he conceals his casket; Harpagon allows it to remain, but is chiefly occupied with its security. The idea, however, of so much incident turning on a casket, is not so happily imagined in the French as in the Latin comedy; since, in the latter, it was the whole treasure of which the miser was possessed, and there was at that time no mode of lending it out safely and to advantage. Harpagon gives a collation, but orders the fragments to be sent back to those who had provided it; Euclio retains the provisions, which had been procured at another’s expense. From the restraint imposed by modern manners, and the circumstance of Harpagon being known to be rich, Moliere has been forced to omit the amusing dilemmas in which Euclio is placed with regard to his attendance on the distributions to the poor. In recompense, he has wonderfully improved the scene about the dowry, as also that in which the miser applies what is said concerning his daughter to his lost treasure; and, on the whole, he has displayed the passion of avarice in more of the incidents and relations of domestic life than the Latin poet. Plautus had remained satisfied with exhibiting a miser, who deprived himself of all the comforts of life, to watch night and day over an unproductive treasure; but Moliere went deeper into the mind. He knew that avarice is accompanied with selfishness, and hardness of heart, and falsehood, and mistrust, and usury; and accordingly, all these vices and evil passions are amalgamated with the character of the French miser.

The Aulularia being a play of character, I have been led to compare the most celebrated imitations of it rather in the exhibition of the miserly character than in the incidents of the piece. Many of the latter which occur in the Avare, have not been borrowed from Plautus, yet are not of Moliere’s invention. Thus he has added from the Pedant Joué of Cyrano Bergerac that part of the plot which consists in the love of the miser and his son for the same woman, as also that which relates to Valere, a young gentleman in love with the miser’s daughter, who had got into his service in disguise, and who, when the miser lost his money, which his son’s servant had stolen, was accused by another servant of having purloined it. Moliere’s notion of the miser’s prodigal son borrowing money from a usurer, and the usurer afterwards proving to be his father, is from La Belle Plaideuse, a comedy of Bois-Robert. In an [pg 115]Italian piece, Le Case Svaligiate, prior to the time of Moliere, and in the harlequin taste, Scapin persuades Pantaloon that the young beauty with whom he is captivated returns his love, that she sets a particular value on old age, and dislikes youthful admirers, whence Pantaloon is induced to give his purse to the flatterer. Frosine attacks the vanity of Harpagon in the same manner, but he, though not unmoved by the flattery, retains his money. Moliere has availed himself of a number of other Italian dramas of the same description for scattered remarks and situations. The name of Harpagon has been suggested to him by the continuation of Codrus Urceus, where Strobilus says that the masters of the present day are so avaricious, that they may be called Harpies or Harpagons:

This may in general be true, as there are certainly few unmingled passions; but I suspect that avarice so completely engrosses the soul, that a simple and unmixed delineation of it is not remote from nature. “The Euclio of Plautus,” says King, in his Anecdotes, “the Avare of Moliere, and Miser of Shadwell, have been all exceeded by persons who have existed within my own knowledge236.”

Bacchides:—is so called from two sisters of the name of Bacchis, who are the courtezans in this play. In a prologue, which is supposed to be spoken by Silenus, mounted on an ass, it is said to be taken from a Greek comedy by Philemon. This information, however, cannot be implicitly relied on, as the prologue was not written in the time of Plautus, and is [pg 117]evidently an addition of a comparatively recent date. Some indeed have supposed that it was prefixed by Petrarch; but at all events the following lines could not have been anterior to the conquest of Greece by the Romans:—

The third scene of the third act of this comedy, where the father of Pistoclerus speaks with so much indulgence of the follies of youth, has been imitated in Moliere’s Fourberies de Scapin, and the fifth scene of the fourth act has suggested one in Le Marriage Interrompu237, by Cailhava. If it could be supposed that Dante had read Plautus, the commencement of Lydus’ soliloquy before the door of Bacchis, might be plausibly conjectured to have suggested that thrilling inscription over the gate of hell, in the third Canto of the Inferno—

Captivi.—The subject and plot of the Captivi are of a different description from those of Plautus’ other comedies. No female characters are introduced; and, as it is said in the epilogue, or concluding address to the spectators,

Though no females are introduced in it, the Captivi is the most tender and amiable of Plautus’ plays, and may be regarded [pg 118]as of a higher description than his other comedies, since it hinges on paternal affection and the fidelity of friendship. Many of the situations are highly touching, and exhibit actions of generous magnanimity, free from any mixture of burlesque. It has indeed been considered by some critics as the origin of that class of dramas, which, under the title of Comedies Larmoyantes, was at one time so much admired and so fashionable in France238, and in which wit and humour, the genuine offspring of Thalia, are superseded by domestic sentiment and pathos.

Hegio, an Ætolian gentleman, had two sons, one of whom, when only four years old, was carried off by a slave, and sold by him in Elis. A war having subsequently broken out between the Elians and Ætolians, Hegio’s other son was taken captive by the Elians. The father, with a view of afterwards ransoming his son, by an exchange, purchased an Elian prisoner, called Philocrates, along with his servant Tyndarus; and the play opens with the master, Philocrates, personating his slave, while the slave, Tyndarus, assumes the character of his master. By this means Tyndarus remains a prisoner under his master’s name, while Hegio is persuaded to send the true Philocrates, under the name of Tyndarus, to Elis, in order to effect the exchange of his son. The deception, however, is discovered by Hegio before the return of Philocrates; and the father, fearing that he had thus lost all hope of ransoming his child, condemns Tyndarus to labour in the mines. In these circumstances, Philocrates returns from Elis with Hegio’s son, and also brings along with him the fugitive slave, who had stolen his other son in infancy. It is then discovered that Tyndarus is this child, who, having been sold to the father of Philocrates, was appointed by him to wait on his son, and had been gradually admitted to his young master’s confidence and friendship.

There has been a great dispute among critics and commentators, whether the dramatic unities have been strictly observed in this comedy. M. De Coste, in the preface to his French translation of the Captivi, maintains, that the unities of place, and time, and action, have been closely attended to. Lessing, who translated the play into German, adopted the opinion of De Coste with regard to the observance of the unities, and he has farther pronounced it the most perfect comedy that, in his time, had yet been represented on the stage239. A German critic, whose letter addressed to Lessing is published in that [pg 119]author’s works240, has keenly opposed these opinions, discussing at considerable length the question of the unities of action, time, and place, as also pointing out many supposed inconsistencies and improbabilities in the conduct of the drama. He objects, in point of verisimilitude, to the long and numerous aparts—the soliloquies of the parasite, which begin the first three acts,—the frequent mention of the market-places and streets of Rome, while the scene is laid in a town of Greece,—and the sudden as well as unaccountable appearance of Stalagmus, the fugitive slave, at the end of the drama. The most serious objection, however, is that which relates to the violation of the dramatic unity of time. The scene is laid in Calydon, the capital of Ætolia; and, at the end of the second act, Philocrates proceeds from that city to Elis, transacts there a variety of affairs, and returns before the play is concluded. Between these two places the distance is fifty miles; and in going from one to the other it was necessary to cross the bay of Corinth. It is therefore impossible (contends this critic,) that De Coste can be accurate in maintaining that the duration of the drama is only seven or eight hours. Allowing the poet, however, the greatest poetical license, and giving for his play the extended period of twenty-four hours, it is scarcely possible that the previous parts of the drama could have been gone through, and the long voyage accomplished, in this space of time. But it farther appears, that Plautus himself did not wish to claim this indulgence, and intended to crowd the journey and all the preceding dramatic incidents into twelve hours at most. He evidently means that the action should be understood as commencing with the morning: Hegio says, in the second scene of the first act,

and it is evident that the action terminates with the evening meal, the preparations for which conclude the fourth act. To all this Lessing replied, that there was no reason to suppose that the scene was laid in Calydon, or that the journey was made to the town of Elis, and that it might easily have been accomplished within the time prescribed by the dramatic rule of unities, if nearer points of the Ætolian and Elian territories be taken than their capitals.

Some of the characters in the Captivi are very beautifully drawn. Hegio is an excellent representation of a respectable [pg 120]rich old citizen: He is naturally a humane good-humoured man, but his disposition is warped by excess of paternal tenderness. There is not in any of the comedies of Plautus, a more agreeable and interesting character than Tyndarus: and no delineation can be more pleasing than that of his faithful attachment to Philocrates, by whom he was in return implicitly trusted, and considered rather in the light of a friend than a slave. In this play, as in most others of Plautus, the parasite is a character somewhat of an episodical description: He goes about prowling for a supper, and is associated to the main subject of the piece only by the delight which he feels at the prospect of a feast, to honour the return of Hegio’s son. The parasites of Plautus are almost as deserving a dissertation as Shakspeare’s clowns. Parasite, as is well known, was a name originally applied in Greece to persons devoted to the service of the gods, and who were appointed for the purpose of keeping the consecrated provisions of the temples. Diodorus of Sinope, as quoted by Athenæus241, after speaking of the dignity of the sacred parasites of Hercules, (who was himself a noted gourmand,) mentions that the rich, in emulation of this demi-god, chose as followers persons called parasites, who were not selected for their virtues or talents, but were remarkable for extravagant flattery to their superiors, and insolence to those inferiors who approached the persons of their patrons. This was the character which came to be represented on the stage. We learn from Athenæus242, that a parasite was introduced in one of his plays by Epicharmus, the founder of the Greek comedy. The parasite of this ancient dramatist lay at the feet of the rich, eat the offals from their tables, and drank the dregs of their cups. He speaks of himself as of a person ever ready to dine abroad when invited, and when any one is to be married, to go to his house without an invitation—to pay for his good cheer by exciting the merriment of the company, and to retire as soon as he had eat and drunk sufficiently, without caring whether or not he was lighted out by the slaves243. In the most ancient comedies, however, this character was not denominated parasite, and was first so called in the plays of Araros, the son of Aristophanes, and one of the earliest authors of the middle comedy. Antiphanes, a dramatist of the same class, has given a very full description of the vocation of a parasite. The part, however, did not become [pg 121]extremely common till the introduction of the new comedy, when Diphilus, whose works were frequently imitated on the Roman stage, particularly distinguished himself by his delineation of the parasitical character244. In the Greek theatre, the part was usually represented by young men, dressed in a black or brown garb, and wearing masks expressive of malignant gaiety. They carried a goblet suspended round their waists, probably lest the slaves of their patrons should fill to them in too small cups; and also a vial of oil to be used at the bath, which was a necessary preparation before sitting down to table, for which the parasite required to be always ready at a moment’s warning245.

It was thus, too, that the character was represented on the Roman stage; and it would farther appear, that the parasites, in the days of Plautus, carried with them a sort of Joe Miller, as a manual of wit, with which they occasionally refreshed their vivacity. Thus the parasite, in the Stichus, says,

and again—

The parasite naturally became a leading character of the Roman stage. In spite of the pride and boasted national independence of its citizens, the whole system of manners at Rome was parasitical. The connection between patron and client, which was originally the cordial intercourse of reciprocal services, soon became that of haughty superiority on the one side, and sordid adulation on the other. Every client was in fact the parasite of some patrician, whose litter he often followed like a slave, conforming to all his caprices, and submitting to all his insults, for the privilege of being placed at the lowest seat of the patron’s table, and there repaying this indelicate hospitality by the most servile flattery. On the stage, the principal use of the parasite was to bring out the other characters from the canvass. Without Gnatho, the Thraso of Terence would have possessed less confidence; and without his flatterer, Pyrgopolinices would never have recollected breaking an elephant’s thigh by a blow of his fist.

The parasite, in the Captivi, may be considered as a fair enough representative of his brethren in the other plays of [pg 122]Plautus. He submits patiently to all manner of ignominious treatment246—his spirits rise and sink according as his prospects of a feast become bright or clouded—he speaks a great deal in soliloquies, in which he talks much of the jests by which he attempted to recommend himself as a guest at the feasts of the Great, but we are not favoured with any of these jests. In such soliloquies, too, he rather expresses what would justly be thought of him by others, than what even a parasite was likely to say of himself.

The parasite is not a character which has been very frequently represented on the modern stage. It is not one into which an Italian audience, who are indifferent to good cheer, would heartily enter. Accordingly, the parasite is not a common character in the native drama of Italy, and is chiefly exhibited in the old comedies of Ariosto and Aretine, which are directly imitated from the plays of Plautus or Terence; but even in them this character does not precisely coincide with the older and more genuine school of parasites. Ligurio, who is called the parasite in the Mandragora of Machiavel, rather corresponds to the intriguing slave than to the parasite of the Roman drama; or at least he resembles the more modern parasites, who, like the Phormio of Terence, ingratiated themselves with their patrons by serviceable roguery, rather than by flattery. Ipocrito, who, in Aretine’s comedy of that name, is also styled the parasite, is a sort of Tartuffe, with charitable and religious maxims constantly in his mouth. He does not insinuate himself into the confidence of his patrons by a gaping admiration of their foolish sayings, but by extolling their virtues, and smoothing over their vices; and so far from being treated with any sort of contumely, he is held in high consideration, and interposes in all domestic arrangements.

It is still more difficult to find a true parasite on the English stage. Sir John Falstaff, though something of a parasite, is as original as he is inimitable. Lazarillo, the hungry courtier in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Woman Hater, and Justice Greedy, in Massinger’s New Way to Pay Old Debts, to whom Sir Giles Overreach gives the command of the kitchen, and absolute authority there, in respect of the entertainment, are rather epicures in constant quest of delicacies, than hungry parasites, who submit to any indignity for the sake of a meal. Lazarillo’s whole intrigue consists of schemes for being invited to dine where there was an umbrana’s head, and we are told that

The plan here adopted by Stalino for securing possession of Casina, is nearly the same with that pursued by the Count Almaviva, in Beaumarchais’ prose comedy, Le Marriage de Figaro; where the Count, with similar intentions, plans a marriage between Suzanne and his valet-de-chambre, Figaro, but has his best-laid schemes invariably frustrated. The concluding part of the Casina has probably, also, suggested the whole of the Marescalco, a comedy of the celebrated Aretine, which turns on the projected nuptials of the character who gives name to the piece, and whose supposed bride is discovered, during the performance of the marriage ceremony, to be a page of the Duke of Mantua, dressed up in wedding garments, in a frolic of the Duke’s courtiers, in order to impose on the Marescalco. Those scenes in the Ragazzo of Lodovico Dolce, where a similar deception is practised and where Giacchetto, the disguised youth, minutely details the event of the trick of which he was made the chief instrument, [pg 126]have also been evidently drawn from the same productive origin.247

The closest imitation, however, of the Casina, is Machiavel’s comedy Clitia. Many of its scenes, indeed, have been literally translated from the Latin, and the incidents are altered in very few particulars. The Stalino of Plautus is called Nicomaco, and his wife Sofronia: their son is named Cleandro, and the dependents employed to court Clitia for behoof of their masters, Eustachio and Pirro. The chief difference is, that the young lover, who is supposed to be absent in the Casina, is introduced on the stage by the Italian author, and the object of his affections is a young lady, brought up and educated by his parents, and originally intrusted to their care by one of their friends, which makes the proposal of her marrying either of the servants offered to her choice more absurd than in the Latin original. The bridal garments, too, are not assumed by one of the rival servants, but by a third character, introduced and employed for the purpose. This comedy of Machiavel, his Mandragola, and the renowned tale of Belfegor, were the productions with which that profound politician and historian, who established a school of political philosophy in the Italian seat of the Muses—who applied a fine analysis to the Roman history, and a subtler than Aristotle to the theory of government—attempted, as he himself has so beautifully expressed it,

Cistellaria, (the Casket.)—The prologue to this play is spoken by the god Auxilium, at the end of the first act. It explains the subject of the piece—compliments the Romans on their power and military glory—and concludes with exhorting them to overcome the Carthaginians, and punish them as they deserve. Hence it is probable, that this play was written during the second Punic war, which terminated in the year 552; and as Plautus was born in the year 525, it may be plausibly conjectured, that the Cistellaria was one of his earliest productions. This also appears from its greater rudeness when compared with his other plays, and from the shortness and simplicity of the plot. But though the argument is trite and sterile, it is enlivened by a good deal of comic [pg 127] humour, particularly in the delineation of some of the subordinate characters. Like many others of Plautus’s plays, it turns on the accidental recognition of a lost child by her parents, in consequence of the discovery of a casket, containing some toys, which had been left with her when exposed, and by means of which she is identified and acknowledged.

In ancient times these recognitions, so frequently exhibited on the stage, were not improbable. The customs of exposing children, and of reducing prisoners of war to slavery—the little connection or intercourse between different countries, from the want of inns or roads—and the consequent difficulty of tracing a lost individual—rendered such incidents, to us apparently so marvellous, of not unusual occurrence in real life. In Greece, particularly, divided as it was into a number of small states, and surrounded by a sea infested with pirates, who carried on a commerce in slaves, free-born children were frequently carried off, and sold in distant countries. By the laws of Athens, marriage with a foreigner was null; or, at least, the progeny of such nuptials were considered as illegitimate, and not entitled to the privileges of Athenian citizens. Hence, the recognition of the supposed stranger was of the utmost importance to herself and lover. In real life, this recognition may have been sometimes actually aided by ornaments and trinkets. Parents frequently tied jewels and rings to the children whom they exposed, in order that such as found them might be encouraged to nourish and educate them, and that they themselves might afterwards be enabled to discover them, if Providence took care for their safety248. Plots, accordingly, which hinged on such circumstances, were invented even by the writers of the old Greek comedy. One of the later pieces of Aristophanes, now lost, entitled Cocalus, is said to have presented a recognition; and nearly the same sort of intrigue was afterwards employed by Menander, and, from his example, by Plautus and Terence. From imitation of the Greek and Latin comedies, similar incidents became common both in dramatic and romantic fiction. The pastoral romance of Longus hinges on a recognition of this species; and those elegant productions, in which the Italians have introduced the characters and occupations of rural life into the drama, are frequently founded on the exposure of children, who, after being brought up as shepherds by reputed fathers, are recognised by their real parents, from ornaments or tokens fastened to their persons when abandoned in infancy or childhood.

The Epidicus is said to have been a principal favourite of [pg 129]the author himself; and, indeed, one of the characters in his Bacchides exclaims,