The Dramatic Values in Plautus | Page 8

anything but a holiday, and found frequent occasion to confiscate a mantle or to ply the rod."[48]
Impatient if the play be delayed, and voicing their disapproval by lusty clapping, stamping, whistling and cat-calls, they are equally ready with noisy approval if the dramatic fare tickle their palate.[49] The tibicen, as he steps forth to render the overture, is greeted uproariously as an old favorite. The manager perhaps appears and announces the names of those taking part, each one of whom is doubtless applauded or hissed in proportion to his measure of popularity. Differences of opinion as to the merits of an individual actor may culminate in the partisans' coming to blows.[50] Horace (Ep. II. I. 200 ff.) comments on the turbulence of the audiences of his day too; while under the Empire factions for and against particular actors grew up, as in the circus.[51] Late-comers of course often disturbed the Prologus in his lines. The continual reiteration that we find in such prologues as the Amph., Cap. and Poen. was naturally designed as a safeguard against such disturbance. Yet these prologues were undoubtedly composed, as Ritschl has shown (Par. 232 ff.), shortly after 146 B.C., and the turbulence of the original audience must have been far greater.
To win the favor of such a crowd, which would groan if instead of the expected comedy a tragedy should be announced,[52] what methods were necessary? Slap-sticks, horse-play, broad slashing swashbuckling humor, thick colors daubed on with lavish brush!
By Cicero's time the public had attained to such a degree of sophistication that the slightest slip on the part of the wretched actor was greeted by a storm of popular disapproval. "Histrio si paulum se movit extra numerum, aut si versus pronuntiatus est syllaba una brevior aut longior, exsibilatur, exploditur," says Cicero.[53] The actor dare not even have a cold, for on the slightest manifestation of hoarseness, he was hooted off, though favorites such as Roscius might be excused on the plea of indisposition.[54] The Scholiast Cruquius to Hor. Ser. I. 10.37 ff. notes: "Poemata ... in theatris exhibita imperitae multitudinis applausum captare."
It is evident from all this that, while the Roman public had made considerable advances in education, their demonstrative temperament had not cooled. It seems eminently fair to deduce that the far ruder and less cultivated audiences of Plautus' day were even more violent in their manifestations of pleasure and displeasure, but that their criterion of taste was solely the amount of amusement derived from the performance and that they bothered themselves little about niceties of rhythm. To the Roman, the scenic and histrionic were the vital features of a production. Again we reiterate, only the bold brush could have pleased them.
That the plays of Plautus attained a permanent position in ihe theatrical repertoire of Rome is of course well known; but he wrote primarily for his own age, and in a difficult environment. Not only did he have to please a highly volatile and inflammable public, but he must have been forced to exercise tact to avoid offending the patrician powers, as the imprisonment of Naevius indicates. Mommsen has an apt summary:[55] "Under such circumstances, where art worked for daily wages and the artist instead of receiving due honour was subjected to disgrace, the new national theatre of the Romans could not present any development either original or even at all artistic."
[Sidenote: The Actor] This brief discussion of the relation between public and playwright will suffice for our purposes. In the course of it we have insensibly encroached upon the next topic: the relation of public and actor. Who after all is the chief factor in the success or failure of a drama, in spite of the oft misquoted adage, "The play's the thing?" The actor! The actor, who can mouth and tear a passion to tatters, or swing a piece of trumpery into popular favor by the brute force of his dash and personality. That this was true in Plautus' day, no less than in our own, is plainly indicated by the personal allusion inserted in the Bac. (214-5):
Etiam Epidicum, quam ego fabulam aeque ac me ipsum amo, Nullam aeque invitus specto, si agit Pellio.
The servile status of the ancient actor is an index to the energy of his performance, if to nothing else. Failure meant a beating, success a drink at least.[56] Augustus humanely abrogated the whipping of actors, but an attempt was made in Tiberius' time to renew the practice.[57] On the other hand, there seem to have been prizes awarded to successful actors,[58] as well as to the poet;[59] but this practice surely arose after Plautus' lifetime. At any rate, whatever was the nature of the reward, in his day the large emoluments won by Roscius and other popular favorites were impossible.[60] The effort demanded by the elaborate