050 
I 
PLAYHOUS E. 
food, without the poignant feafoning to which the 
audience had been accultomed, palled on their tafte; and 
this call of pieces foon gave place to that which the 
ancients called the new comedy, fo fuccefsfully cultivated 
by Menander and others. 
The new cornedtj had for its objedt the ludicrous inci¬ 
dents of private life; celebrare domeflica f'afla , fays 
Horace; to detail thofe foibles, follies, and whimfical acci¬ 
dents, which are circumftances material and ferious to the 
agents themfelves, but, as very ufually happens on the 
llage of the world, matters only of ludicrous intereft to 
the lookers-on. The new comedy admitted alfo many 
incidents of a charadler not purely ludicrous, and fome 
which, calling forth pathetic emotion, approached more 
nearly to the charadter of tragedy than had been admitted 
in the ancient comedies of Ariftophanes, and in this 
rather refembled what the French have called tragedie 
lourgcoife. It is fcarcely necefiary to remark, that the 
line cannot be always diftindlly drawn betwixt the fubjedls 
which excite mirth and thofe which call forth fympathy. 
It often happens that the fame incident is at once affect¬ 
ing and ludicrous, or admits of being prefented alter¬ 
nately in either point of view. In a drama, alfo, which 
treats of the faults and lighter vices, as well as of the 
follies of mankind, it is natural that the author Ihould 
fometimes affume the high tone of the moralill. In thefe 
cafes, to ufe the language of Horace, comedy exalts her 
voice; and the offended father, the Pantaloon of the piece, 
fwells into fublimity of language. A pleafant fpecies of 
compofition was thus attained, in which wit and humour 
were relieved by touches both of fentiment and moral 
inftrudtion. The new comedy, taken in this enlarged 
point of view, formed the introduction to the modern 
drama; but it was neither fo comprehenfive in its plan, 
nor fo various in character and intereft. To avoid the 
charge of alfaulting, or perhaps the temptation to attack, 
private perfons, the aCtors in their drama were rather 
painted as perfonifications of particular claffes of fociety, 
than living individual characters. The lift of 'thefe per- 
fonages was fufficiently meagre. The principal character, 
upon whofe devices and ingenuity the whole plot ufually 
turns, is the Gela of the piece, a witty, roguifti, infi- 
nuating, and malignant, (lave, the confidant of a wild 
and extravagant fon, whom he aids in his pious endea¬ 
vours to cheat a fufpicious, fevere, and griping, father. 
When to thefe three are added, a wily courtezan, a pro- 
curefs, a ftolen virgin, who is generally a mute or nearly 
fuch, we have all the ftock-charaCters which are proper 
to the claffic comedy. Upon this limited fcale of notes 
the ancients rung their changes, relieving them occafion- 
ally, however, by the introduction of a boaftful foldier, a 
boorifh clown, or a mild and good-natured old man, to 
contrail with the irafcible Chremes of the piece, the more 
ordinary reprefentative of old age. The plot is in ge¬ 
neral as limple as the call of the characters. A father 
lofes his child, who falls into the hands of a procurefs or 
flave-merchant. The efforts of the youth, who falls in 
love with this captive, to ranfom her from her captivity, 
are feconded by the Have, who aids him in the various 
devices necefiary to extort from his father the funds ne- 
ceffary for the purchafe; and their tricks form the prin¬ 
cipal part of the intrigue. When it is necefiary the play 
ffiall clofe, the difcovery of the girl’s birth takes place, 
and the young couple are married. The plots are, indeed, 
fometimes extended, or enlarged by additional circum¬ 
ftances, but very feldom by any novelty of character or 
variety of general form. 
If thefe dramas, however, do not entertain us with a 
difplay of the fpecific varieties of character, they often 
convey maxims evincing a deep knowledge of human 
paflion and feeling; and are fo admirably adapted to 
exprefs, in few and pithy words, truths which it is im¬ 
portant to remember, that even the apoftle Paul himfelf 
lias not difdained to quote a paflage from a Grecian 
dramatift. The fituation, alfo, of their perfonages, is 
often truly comic; and the modern writers who have 
borrowed their ideas, and arranged them according to 
the tafte of their own age, have often been indebted to 
the ancients for the principal caufe of their fuccefs. 
The chorus, filenced, as we have feen, owing to the 
licence of the old comedy, made no appendage to that 
which was fubftituted in its place. The exhibition of the 
Grecian comedy did not, in other refpeCts, in fo far as we 
know, materially differ from that of the tragedy. Inftead 
of the choral interludes, the reprefentation was now 
divided, by intervals of ceffation, into aCls, as upon the 
modern (tage. 
The Romans, rather martial than literary, copied their 
dramatic entertainments from the Greeks. The Romans 
were not, indeed, without a fort of rude dramatic repre¬ 
fentation of their own, of the fame nature with that 
which, as w'e have already noticed, ufually arifes in an 
early period of fociety. Thefe were called Fabulce 
Atellanee; farces, for fuch they were, which took their 
name from Atella, a town belonging to the Ofci in Italy. 
They were performed by the Roman youth, who ufed to 
attack each other with fatirical couplets during the in¬ 
tervals of fome rude game, in which they feem to have re- 
prefented the charadters of fabulous antiquity. But 391 
years before the Chriftian a;ra, the Romans, in the time 
of a great peftilence, as we learn from Livy, introduced a 
more regular fpecies of theatrical entertainment, in order 
to propitiate the deities by a folemn exhibition of public 
games, after which, this amufement affumed, according 
to the hiftorian, the appearance of a profeffional art; and 
the Roman youth, who had hitherto appeared as amateur 
performers, gave up the ftage to regular performers. 
Thefe plays continued, however, to be of a very rude 
ftrudture, until the Grecian ftage was tranfplanted to 
Rome. Livius Andronicus, by birth a Grecian, led the 
way in this improvement, and is accounted her firft dra¬ 
matift. See Livy, book iii. v. vii. 
Seneca the philofopher is the only Roman tragedian 
whole works have reached our time. His tragedies 
afford no very favourable fpecimen of Roman art. They 
are in the falfe tafte which iucceeded the age of Augultus, 
and debafed the ftyle of compofition of that of Nero ; 
bombaftic, tedious, and pedantic ; treating, indeed, of 
Grecian fubjedls, but not with Grecian art. It is a 
curious fadt, that in Seneca’s Medea, the Chorus, at the 
end of the fecond adt, diftindlly predicts the difcovery of 
America, which took place 1400 years after that drama 
was written. In the paflage here alluded to, it is fiaid, 
“ A new Tiphys, a fon of the earth, will, in ages to come, 
difcover remote regions towards the weft, and Thule will 
no longer be the extremity of the univerfe.” 
-—venient annis 
Stecula feris, quibus Oceanus 
Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens 
Pateat tellus, Tiphyfque novos 
Detegat orbes, nec fit terris ultima Thule. 
« 
By a fingular contrail, although we have loft the more 
valuable tragedies of Rome, we have been compelled to 
judge of the new Greek comedy through the medium 
of the Latin tranllations. Of Menander we have but a 
few fragments, and our examples of his drama are de¬ 
rived exclufively from Plautus and Terence. Of thefe, 
the former appears the more original, the latter the more 
elegant, author. The comedies of Plautus are much 
more connedled with manners, much more full of 
what may be termed drollery and comic fituation, 
and are believed to poffefs a greater portion of Roman 
charadter. The Romans indeed, had two fpecies .of 
comedy, the Palliata, where the fcene and drefs were 
Grecian ; and the Togata, where both were Roman. But, 
befides this diftindtion, even the Mantled, or Grecian, 
comedy, might be more or lefs of a Roman call; and 
Plautus is luppofed to have infufed a much ftronger 
national tone into his plays than can be traced in 
thofe 
