“_Si moins ami du peuple_ en ses doctes peintures, Il n’eût point fait souvent grimacer ses figures, Quitte, pour le bouffon, l’agreable et le fin, Et, sans honte, a Terence allié Tabarin.” BOILEAU.
Lopez de Vega, in his _Arte de hacer Comedias_, written, in 1609, at the request of a poetical academy, and containing a code of laws for the modern drama, admits, that when he was about to write a comedy, he laid aside all dramatic precepts, and wrote solely for the vulgar, who had to pay for their amusement:
“Quando he de escribir una comedia, Encierro los preceptos con seis llaves; Saco a Terencio y Plauto de mi studio Para que no den voces, porque suele Dar gritos la verdad en libios mudos; Y escribo por el arte que inventaron Los que el vulgar aplauso pretendieron, Porque como los paga el vulgo, es justo Hablarle in necio para darle gusto.”
His indulgent conformity, however, to the unpolished taste of his age, ought not to be admitted as an excuse for the obscenities which Plautus has introduced. But though it must be confessed, that he is liable to some censure in this particular, he is not nearly so culpable as has been generally imagined. The commentators, indeed, have been often remarkably industrious in finding out allusions, which do not consist very clearly with the plain and obvious meaning of the context. The editor of the Delphin Plautus has not rejected above five pages from the twenty plays on this account; and many passages even in those could hardly offend the most scrupulous reader. Some of the comedies, indeed, as the _Captivi_ and _Trinummus_, are free from any moral objection; and, with the exception of the _Casina_, none of them are so indelicate as many plays of Massinger and Ford, in the time of James I., or Etheridge and Shadwell, during the reigns of Charles II. and his successor.
It being the great aim of Plautus to excite the merriment of the rabble, he, of course, was little anxious about the strict preservation of the dramatic unities; and it was a more important object with him to bring a striking scene into view, than to preserve the unity of place. In the _Aulularia_, part of the action is laid in the miser’s dwelling, and part in the various places where he goes to conceal his treasure: in the _Mostellaria_ and _Truculentus_, the scene changes from the street to apartments in different houses.
