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SPECIMENS OF LATIN COMEDY N II, 



o. 



THE AMPHITRYON, OF PLAUTUS. 



THE great English lexicographer once meditated a treatise, in which 

 he designed to shew how exceedingly rare is originality of thought and 

 novelty of conceit ; and how the same topics have presented themselves 

 to the moralist and the poet in every age ; and the same incidents and 

 train of circumstances have afforded a subject for the satirical raillery 

 of the comedian, and the serious representations of the " tragicus 

 cothurnus." Had not the multiplicity of his other literary enterprizes 

 interfered with the prosecution of his design, it is probable that he 

 would have drawn some of the most powerful arguments in support of 

 his theory from the striking similarity of the plots and scenes of the 

 writers of comedy and tragedy ; for that facts and circumstances, simi- 

 lar in their nature, and essentially the same, have always furnished 

 employment to the comic and the tragic poet, is a truth that needs no 

 elaborate proof. This remark is peculiarly applicable to the subject of 

 the play before us. Plautus is supposed to be indebted for the idea of 

 the plot to a Greek comedy bearing the same title mentioned by Athe- 

 naeus, or, perhaps, with more plausibility, to a play of Epicharmus, the 

 Syracusan. It is far from probable that the tragic parts were written 

 quite independently of the Alcmena of Euripides. We say the tragic 

 parts, because (not coming up to the mark of comic orthodoxy) he dis- 

 regarded the imaginary, and yet unsystematised rules of the critics, and, 

 like our own Shakspeare, united the comic and the tragic the ludi- 

 crous and the sorrowful and has not scrupled even in the prologue 

 to call the play a tragico-comcedia, or tragi-comedy. This explanation 

 of the term tragico-comcedia has been disputed by some, though better 

 defended by others. 



The Amphitryon has been imitated in almost every language of 

 modern Europe, and in some more than once. It was first imitated in 

 Italy by Ludovico Dolce, in his play entitled Marito next in France 

 by Rotron, who was succeeded by Moliere and, last of all, was deemed 

 worthy of imitation, and even sometimes of translation, by Dryden, 

 " crowning rose of the whole wreath." Such are the men by whom 

 Plautus has been followed, not always passibus cequis, and by 

 whom the Amphitryon has been naturalized in England, Italy, and 

 France. 



But though the advantages which Plautus possessed were both fewer 

 and smaller than those of his more favoured successors, the illustrious 

 editor and biographer of "glorious John," is constrained to confess 

 (in his prefatory notice of this play) that they " have made but few 

 and inconsiderable improvements." Though in another place he speaks 

 of the Amphitryon as one of the best of all Dryden's comedies ; and the 

 very learned Mad. Dacier has spoken of the Amphitryon of Moliere as 

 the most perfect of all his plays. And as the English and French imi- 

 tations of this play are considered among the best productions of their 

 respective authors, so the original was considered among the ancient 

 Romans ; and indeed so high was the estimation in which it was held, 

 that, in the reign of Diocletian, it was acted by royal authority, in order 



