 | The Self-Tormentor |  |
SCENE VII.
Enter CLITIPHO.Clit.
O Mother, if there ever was a time
When you took pleasure in me, or delight
To call me son, beseech you, think of that;
Pity my present misery, and tell me
Who are my real parents!
Sostra.
My dear son,
Take not, I beg, that notion to your mind,
That you're an alien to our blood.
Clit.
I am.
Sostra.
Ah me! and can you then demand me that?
So may you prosper after both, as you're
Take heed henceforward that I never hear
Such words from you.
Chremes.
And if you fear your father,
See that I never find such vices in you.
Clit.
What vices?
Chremes.
What? I'll tell you. Trifler, idler,
Cheat, drunkard, whoremaster, and prodigal.
—Think this, and think that you are our's.
Sostra.
These words
Suit not a father.
Chremes.
No, no, Clitipho,
Tho' from my brain you had been born, as Pallas
Sprang, it is said, from Jupiter, I wou'd not
Bear the disgrace of your enormities.
Sostra.
The Gods forbid—
Chremes.
I know not for the Gods:
For parents, which you have: but what is wanting,
Obedience to your father, and the means
To keep what he by labour hath acquir'd,
For That you seek not.—Did you not by tricks
Ev'n to my presence introduce—I blush
To speak immodestly before your mother:
But you by no means blush'd to do't.
Clit.
Alas!
How hateful am I to myself! how much
Am I asham'd! so lost, I cannot tell
How to attempt to pacify my father.
I cannot help considering this as a touch of comick anger. However, all the commentators are of a different opinion; and it is generally imagined that this is the passage alluded to by Horace, when he says in his Art of Poetry,
Interdum tamen & vocem Comœdia tollit;Iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore.
Yet Comedy sometimes her voice may raise,
And angry Chremes rail in swelling phrase.
Francis.
Nescio Deos. Lambinus, in his admirable letter to Charles the 9th, accuses Terence of impiety: but the charge is groundless. Nay, had Terence been ever so wicked, he would scarce have been so imprudent as to introduce impious expressions in a play which was to be licensed by the magistrates. Nescio Deos does not imply, I care not for the Gods, but, I know not what the Gods will do. This is farther confirmed by a passage in the fourth scene of the second act. Antiphila, in answer to what Bacchis tells her of other women, says Nescio alias, &c. For my own part (says she) I know not what other women may do, &c. and not, I don't care for other women. Dacier.
| The Self-Tormentor | |