University of Virginia Library

Terence's comedy of the Self-Tormentor is from the beginning to the end a perfect picture of human life, but I did not observe in the whole one passage that could raise a laugh.

The idea of this drama [Comedy] is much enlarged beyond what it was in Aristotle's time; who defines it to be, an imitation of light and trivial actions, provoking ridicule. His notion was taken from the state and practice of the Athenian stage; that is, from the old or middle comedy, which answers to this description. The great revolution, which the introduction of the new comedy made in the drama, did not happen till afterwards. This proposed for its object, in general, the actions and characters of ordinary life; which are not, of necessity, ridiculous, but, as appears to every observer, of a mixt kind, serious, as well as ludicrous, and, within their proper sphere of influence, not unfrequently even important. This kind of imitation, therefore, now admits the serious; and its scenes, even without the least mixture of pleasantry, are entirely COMICK. Though the common run of laughers in our theatre are so little aware of the extension of this province, that I should scarcely have hazarded the observation, but for the authority of Terence, who hath confessedly very little of the pleasant in his drama. Nay, one of the most admired of his comedies hath the gravity, and, in some places, almost the solemnity of tragedy itself.

—Terence,—whether impelled by his native humour, or determined by his truer taste, mixed so little of the ridiculous in his comedy, as plainly shews, it might, in his opinion, subsist entirely without it.

In the passages, selected from the ingenious and learned critick last cited, are these four positions. First, that Aristotle (who founded his notion of Comedy on the Margites of Homer, as he did that of Tragedy on the Iliad) had not so enlarged an idea of that kind of drama, as we have at this time, or as was entertained by the authors of the new comedy: Secondly, that this kind of imitation, even without the LEAST MIXTURE of pleasantry, is entirely COMICK: Thirdly, that Comedy might, in the opinion of Terence, subsist entirely without the RIDICULOUS: And fourthly, that the Self-Tormentor hath the gravity of tragedy itself.

The two first positions concerning Aristotle's idea of this kind of imitation, and the genius of Comedy itself, it is not necessary to examine at present; and indeed they are questions of too extensive a nature to be agitated in a fugitive note: But in regard to the two last positions, with all due deference to the learned critick, I will venture to assert that the authority of Terence cannot be fairly pleaded in confirmation of the doctrine, that Comedy may subsist without the least mixture of the pleasant or ridiculous. Térence, say the French criticks, fait rire au dedans, & Plaute au dehors. The humour of Terence is indeed of a more chaste and delicate complection than that of Plautus, Jonson, or Moliere. There are also, it is true, many grave and affecting passages in his plays, which Horace in his rule of Interdum tamen, &c. and even “the common run of laughers in our theatre” allow and applaud in our gayest comedies. I cannot however think that he ever trespasses on the severity or solemnity of Tragedy: nor can I think that there are not touches of humour in every one of the plays, which he has left behind him; some humour of dialogue, more of character, and still more of comick situation, necessarily resulting from the artful contexture of his pieces. The Andrian, The Eunuch, The Brothers, and Phormio, especially the second and fourth, are confessedly pleasant comedies, and the Eunuch in particular the most favourite entertainment of the Roman theatre. Instances of humour have been produced, by the ingenious critick himself, even from the Step-Mother; and the ensuing notes will probably point out more. As to the present comedy, the Self-Tormentor, I should imagine that a man, with much less mercury in his composition than Sir Richard Steele, might have met with more than one or two passages in it that would raise a laugh. Terence indeed does not, like the player-clowns mentioned by Shakespeare's Hamlet, “set on the spectators to laugh, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be to be considered.” He never starts from the subject, merely to indulge himself in pleasantries, like Plautus and even Moliere, for whole scenes together. His humour always arises from the occasion, and flows from him in the natural course of the fable; in which he not only does not admit idle scenes, but scarce ever a speech that is not immediately conducive to the business of the drama. His humour, therefore, must necessarily be close and compact, and requires the constant attention of the reader to the incidents that produce it, on which dramatick humour often in great measure depends; but would of course unfold itself in the representation, when those incidents were thrown into action. In the present comedy, the character of Syrus, bating the description in the second act, must be allowed to be wholly comick; and that of Chremes still more so. The conduct of the third and fourth acts is happily contrived for the production of mirth, and the situation of the two old men in the first scene of the fifth act is very pleasantly imagined. The deep distress of Menedemus, with which the play opens, makes but a very inconsiderable part of Terence's comedy; and I am apt to think, as I have before hinted in another place, that the Self-Tormentor of Menander was a more capital and interesting character. As our poet has contrived, the self-punishment of Menedemus ends as soon as the play begins. The son returns in the very second scene; and the chief cause of the grief of Menedemus being removed, other incidents, and those of the most comick cast too, are worked into the play; which, in relation to the subject of it, might perhaps, with more propriety, have been entitled The Fathers, than The Self-Tormentor. I cannot therefore, notwithstanding the pathos and simplicity of the first scene, agree to the last position, “that this comedy hath the gravity of tragedy itself.”