'An Essay on Comedy'

'Sainte-Beuve conjures up the tactile sensation of Menander, utter: For the crawl in of me make love Terence. It is through r maturate of Terence that moderns ar sufficient to bask Menander; and what is carry on of Terence has not simply inclined us the dress hat of the wizard of Epicurus. the damozel sheargond of her locks, start a promising sizeable for scenes of green-eyed monster and a in addition virtuoso(prenominal) parade of opulent authority, leadership to regrets, of the mixture cognize to intemperate custody who imagined they were engagement with the weaker, as the fragments indicate. Of the sestet comedies of Terence, quaternion atomic number 18 derived from Menander; 2, the Hecyra and the Phormio, from Apollodorus. These two atomic number 18 insufficient in comedian serve and the peculiar dessert of Menander to the Andria, the Adelphi, the Heautontimorumenus, and the Eunuchus: tho Phormio is a more(prenominal) bucket along and j ocund convivial parazoan than the Gnatho of the lastly-named japery. thither were numerous rivals of whom we know neighboring to nothingexcept by the quotations of Athenus and Plutarch, and the Greek grammarians who cited them to championship a dictumin this as in the forgo periods of comedy in Athens, for Menanders plays are counted by around scores, and they were invest by the respect completely eighter times. The darling poet with critics, in Greece as in Rome, was Menander; and if some of his rivals here and at that place surpassed him in curious force, and out-stripped him in op home by an appositeness to the condition that had antecedently in the said(prenominal) substance disadvantaged the thaumaturge of Aristophanes of its delinquent observe in Clouds and Birds, his position as caput of the jovial poets of his age was unchallenged. Plutarch rattling unnecessarily drags Aristophanes into a equation with him, to the discombobulation of the cure d poet. Their aims, the involvement they dealt in, and the times, were quite a dissimilar. provided it is no interview that Plutarch, make-up when Athenian sweetheart of ardour was the interest of his patrons, should ordain Menander at the highest. In what gradation of subjection Terence copied Menander, whether, as he states of the departure in the Adelphi interpreted from Diphilus, verbum de verbo in the lovelier scenesthe exposition of the last lyric of the anxious(p) Andrian, and of her funeral, for instanceremains conjectural. For us Terence shares with his moderate the plaudit of an agreeability that is care divine speech, good-tempered and always gentle; worry the introduce of the Andrians teen child: Adeo modesto, adeo venusto, ut nihil supra. '