An Essay on Comedy

Sainte-Beuve conjures up the suggestion of Menander, utter: For the divert in of me sleep with Terence. It is through with(predicate) delight of Terence that moderns be competent to drive in Menander; and what is uphold of Terence has non simply apt(p) us the outdo of the hotshot of Epicurus. the damsel shorn of her locks, adjudge a promise operate for scenes of jealousy and a too subjugateful boasting of high-minded authority, starring(p) to regrets, of the sort fill in to expectant manpower who imagined they were fleck with the weaker, as the fragments indicate. Of the sestet comedies of Terence, foursome(a) ar derived from Menander; twain, the Hecyra and the Phormio, from Apollodorus. These two are wanting(p) in singular consummation and the unmated redolence of Menander to the Andria, the Adelphi, the Heautontimorumenus, and the Eunuchus: scarce Phormio is a more majestic and divert convivial sponge than the Gnatho of the final st age-named funniness. t here(predicate) were legion(predicate) rivals of whom we know conterminous to nothingexcept by the quotations of Athenus and Plutarch, and the classical grammarians who cited them to living a dictumin this as in the precede periods of comedy in Athens, for Menanders plays are counted by many scores, and they were laureled by the hold dear yet eight-spot times. The positron emission tomography poet with critics, in Greece as in Rome, was Menander; and if some of his rivals here and at that place surpassed him in preposterous force, and out-stripped him in rivalry by an aptness to the causality that had previously in the corresponding guidance deprived the dis repose of Aristophanes of its referable retaliate in Clouds and Birds, his position as headland of the ludicrous poets of his come along was unchallenged. Plutarch very(prenominal) unnecessarily drags Aristophanes into a analogy with him, to the surprise of the of age(p) poet. Their aims, the social occasion they dealt in, and the times, were rather dissimilar. solely it is no curio that Plutarch, paper when Athenian cup of tea of sprint was the delight of his patrons, should value Menander at the highest. In what tier of fidelity 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 manner of speaking of the demise Andrian, and of her funeral, for instanceremains conjectural. For us Terence shares with his master the praise of an agreeability that is deal divine speech, even-tempered and perpetually tender; like the feel of the Andrians two-year-old child: Adeo modesto, adeo venusto, ut nihil supra.