University of Virginia Library

With the entrance of Laches into the house of Thais, and in consequence of it, his consent to the marriage of Chærea with Pamphila, the Fable of the Eunuch is certainly concluded: and all that follows, like the last Scene of the Andrian, is but the lame completion of an Episode, limping after the main action. In the four first acts the adventures of Thraso are so artfully interwoven with the other business of the play, that they are fairly blended and incorporated with the fable of the Eunuch: but here we perceive that though our Author has got rid of one of Menander's pieces, the other, the Colax, still hangs heavy on his hands. Was an author to form his play on twenty different pieces, if he could melt them all down into one action, there would be no impropriety: but if he borrows only from Two, whenever the episode ceases to act as one of the necessary springs of the main action, it becomes redundant, and the Unity of the Action (perhaps the only Unity, which ought never to be violated) is destroyed. Thraso, says Donatus, is brought back again, in order to be admitted to some share in the good graces of Thais, that he may not be made unhappy at the end of the play: but surely it is an essential part of the Poetical Justice of Comedy to expose coxcombs to ridicule, and to punish them, though without any shocking severity, for their follies.

There was no doubt at Athens some Comedy of the Loves of Hercules and Omphale; in which the Heroe was represented with a distaff by the side of his mistress, who broke his head with her slipper. To which Gnatho alludes in this place. Dacier.