such, we have all the stock-characters which are proper to the classio comedy. Upon this limited scale of notes the ancients rung their changes, relieving them occasionally, however, by the introduction of a boastful soldier, boorish clown, or a mild and good-natured old man, to contrast with the irascible Chremes of the piece, the more ordinary representative of old age. The plot is in general as simple as the cast of the characters. A father loses his child, who falls into the hands of a procuress or slavemerchant. The efforts of the youth, who falls in love with this captive, to ransom her from her captivity, are seconded by the slave, who aids him in the various devices necessary to extort from his father the funds necessary for the purchase, and their tricks form the principal part of the intrigue. When it is necessary that the play shall close, the discovery of the girl's birth takes place, and the young couple are married. The plots are, indeed, sometimes extended or enlarged by additional circumstances, but very seldom by any novelty of character or variety of general form. It is a necessary consequence, that the ancient comic authors were confined within a very narrow compass. The vast and inexhaustible variety of knavery, folly, affectation, humour, &c. &c., as mingled with each other, or as modified by difference of age, sex, temper, education, profession, and habit of body, are all within the royalty of the modern comic dramatist, and he may summon them up under what limitations and in what circumstances he pleases, to play their parts in his piece. The ancients were much more limited in their circle of materials, and, perhaps, we must look for the ruling cause, once more, in the great size of their theatres, and to the use of the mask; which, though it easily presented the general or generic character of the personage introduced, was incapable of the endless variety which can be given to ridicule of a more minute, refined, and personal kind, by the flexible organs of a modern actor. But besides this powerful reason for refraining from any attempt to draw characters distinguished by peculiar habits, there is much reason to think that the mode of life pursued by the ancient Athenians was unfavourable to the formation of whimsical, original, or eccentric characters. Citizens of the same state, they lived much together, and the differences of ranks did not make the same distinction in taste and manners as in modern Europe. The occupation was also the same. They were all public men, and had a common interest in the management of the state; and it probably followed, that, in men whose thoughts and pursuits were all bent the same way, the same general similarity of manners might be found to exist, which is remarked in those who follow the same profession. The differences of youth and age, of riches and poverty, of good or bad temper, &c. must have been much modified in Attica, where all free citizens were, to a certain degree, on a level,— discussed the same topics of state, and gave the same vote to forward them-enjoyed without restriction the same public amusements,—and where the same general cast of manners might descend to the lowest of the citizens, for the very reason that even a poor herb-woman understands the delicacy of the Attic dialect so perfectly, as to distinguish a stranger by the first words he addressed to her. The Chorus, silenced, as we have seen, owing to the license of the old comedy, made no appendage to that which was substituted in its place. The exhibition of the Grecian comedy did not, in other respects, in so far as we know, materially differ from that of the tragedy. Instead of the choral interludes, the representation was now divided, by intervals of cessation, into acts, as upon the modern stage. And the number five seems to have been fixed upon as the most convenient and best adapted for the purposes of representation. The plot, as we have seen, and the distinct and discriminated specification of character, were, in either case, subordinate considerations to the force of style and composition. It follows, of consequence, that we can better understand and enjoy the tragedies than the comedies of the ancients. The circumstances which excite sublime or terrific sensations are the same, notwithstanding the difference of age, country and language. But comic humour is of a character much more evanescent. The force of wit depends almost entirely upon time, circumstance, and manners; in so much, that a jest which raises inextinguishable laughter in a particular class of society appears flat or disgusting if uttered in another. It is, therefore, no wonder that the ancient comedy, turning upon manners so far removed from our own time, should appear to us rather dull and inartificial. The nature of the intercourse between the sexes in classic times was also unfavourable for comedy. The coquette, the fine lady, the romp, all those various shades of the female character, which occupy so many pleasant scenes on the modern stage, were totally unknown to ancient manners. The wife of the ancient comedy was a mere household drudge, the vassal, not the companion of an imperious husband. The young woman, whose beauty is the acting motive of the intrigue, never evinces the slightest intellectual property of any kind. And the only female character admitting of some vivacity, is that of the courtezan, whose wit as well as her charms, appear to have been professional. After subtracting the large field afforded by female art or caprice, female wit, or folly, or affection, the realm of the ancient comedy will appear much circumscribed; and we have yet to estimate a large deduction to be made on account of the rust of antiquity, and the total change of religion and manners. It is no wonder, therefore, that the wit of Plautus and Terence should come forth diminished in weight and substance, after having been subjected to the alembic of modern criticism. That which survives the investigation, however, is of a solid and valuable character. If these Dramas do not entertain us with a display of the specific varieties of character, they often convey maxims evincing a deep knowledge of human passion and feeling; and are so admirably adapted to express, in few and pithy words, truths which it is important to remember, that even the Apostle Paul himself has not disdained to quote a passage from a Grecian dramatist. The situation, also, of their personages is often truly comic; and the modern writers who have borrowed their ideas, and arranged them according to the taste of their own age, have been indebted to the ancients for the principal causes of their success. Having dwelt thus long upon the Grecian Drama, we are entitled to treat with conciseness that of Rome, which, like the other fine arts, that people, rather martial than literary, copied from their more ingenious neighbours. The Romans were not, indeed, without a sort of rude dramatic representation of their own, of the same nature with that which, as we have already noticed, usually rises in an early period of society. These were called Fabulæ Atellana; farces, for such they were, which took their name from Atella, a town belonging to the Osci in Italy. They were performed by the Roman youth, who used to attack each other with satirical couplets during the intervals of some rude game in which they seem to have represented the characters of fabulous antiquity. But 361 years before the Christian era, the Romans, in the time of a great pestilence, as we learn from Livy, introduced a more regular species of theatrical entertainment, in order to propitiate the deities by a solemn exhibition of public games; after which, what had hitherto been matter of mere frolic and amusement, assumed, according to the historian, the appearance of a professional art; and the Roman youth, who had hitherto appeared as amateur performers, gave up the stage to regular actors. These plays continued, however, to be of a very rude structure, until the Grecian stage was transplanted to Rome. Livius Andronicus, by birth a Grecian, led the way in this improvement, and is accounted her first dramatist. Seneca, the philosopher, is the only Roman tragedian whose works have reached our time. His tragedies afford no very favourable specimen of Roman art. They are in the false taste which succeeded the age of Augustus, and debased the style of composition in that of Nero; bombastic, tedious, and pedantic; treating, indeed, of Grecian subjects, but not with Grecian art. By a singular contrast, although we have lost the more valuable tragedies of Rome, we have been compelled to judge of the new Greek comedy, through the medium of the Latin translations. Of Menander we have but a few fragments, and our examples of his Drama are de L rived exclusively from Plautus and Terence. Of these, the former ap pears the more original, the latter the more elegant author. The comedies of Plautus are much more connected with manners,-much more full of what may be termed drollery and comic situation,—and are believed to possess a greater portion of Roman character. The Romans, indeed, had two species of comedy, the Palliata, where the scene and dress were Grecian; the Togata, where both were Roman. But besides this distinction, even the Mantled, or Grecian comedy, might be more or less of a Roman cast; and Plautus is supposed to have infused a much stronger national tone into his plays than can be traced in those of Terence. They are also of a ruder cast, and more extravagant, retaining, perhaps, a larger portion of the rough horse-play peculiar to the Fabula Atellana. Terence, on the contrary, is elegant, refined, and sententious; decorous and regular in the construction of his plots; exhibiting more of wit in his dialogue, than of comic force in his situations; grave often and moral; sometimes even pathetic ; and furnishing, upon the whole, the most perfect specimen of the Grecian comedy, both in action and character. The alterations which the Romans made in the practice of the theatrical art do not seem to have been of great consequence. One circumstance, however, deserves notice. The orchestra, or, as we should say, the pit of the theatre, was no longer left vacant for the occasional Dccupation of the Chorus, but was filled with the senators, knights, and other more respectable citizens. The stage was thus brought more near to the eye of the higher class of the audience. It would also seem that the theatres were smaller; for we read of two so constructed, that each turned upon a pivot, so that, when placed back to back, they were separate theatres, yet were capable of being wheeled round, with all the audience, so as to bring their oblong ends together, then forming a single amphitheatre, in which the games of the circus succeeded to dramatic representation. It is not easy to conceive the existence of such machinery; but the story, at any rate, seems to show, that their theatres must have been greatly smaller than those of Greece, to admit the supposition of such an evolution as being in any degree practicable. This diminution in the size of the house, and the occupation of the orchestra by the most dignified part of the audience, may have afforded a reason why masks were, at least occasionally, disused on the Roman stage. That they were sometimes disused is certain; for Cicero mentions Roscius Gallus as using a mask to conceal a deformity arising from the inequality of his eyes, which implies plainly that other comedians played with their faces disclosed. It is therefore probable, that the imperfections of the mask were felt, so soon as the distance was diminished between the performer and the spectators; and we may hazard a conjecture, that this disguise was first laid aside in the smaller theatres. But the principal change introduced by the Romans into the Drama, and which continues to effect it in every country of Europe, respected the status or rank of the actors in society. We have seen that Athens, enthusiastic in her attachment to the fine arts, held no circumstances degrading which were connected with them. Æschylus and Sophocles were soldiers and statesmen, yet lost nothing in the opinion of their countrymen, by appearing on the public stage. Euripides, who was also a person of consequence, proved that "love esteems no office mean;" for he danced in a female disguise in his own Drama, and that not as the. Princess Nauticlea, but as one of her handmaidens, or, in modern phrase, as a figurante. The Grecians, therefore, attached no dishonour to the person of the actor, nor esteemed that he who contributed to giving the amusement of the theatre, was at all degraded beneath those who received it. It was otherwise in Rome. The contempt which the Romans entertained for players might be founded partly upon their confounding this elegant amusement with the games of the Circus and amphitheatre, performed by gladiators and slaves, the meanest, in short, of mankind. Hence, to use the words of St. Augustin," the ancient Romans, accounting the art of stage-playing and the whole scene infamous, ordained that this sort of men should not only want the honour of other citizens, but also be disfranchised and thrust out of their tribe, by a legal and disgraceful censure, which the censors were to execute; because they would not suffer their vulgar sort of people, much less their senators, to be defamed, disgraced, or defiled with stage-players;," which act of theirs he styles an excellent true Roman prudence, to be enumerated among the Roman's praises." 66 Accordingly, an edict of the prætor stigmatized as infamous all who appeared on the stage, either to speak or act; but it is remarkable that from this general proscription the Roman youth were excepted; and they continued to enact the Fabula Atellana, namely, the farces or drolleries of ancient Italian origin, without incurring any stigma. This exception seems to indicate, that the edict originated in the national pride of the Romans, and their contempt for Grecian literature, and for foreigners of every description. Under any other view it is impossible they should have preferred the actors in these coarse farces, who, by the by, are supposed to have been the originals of no less persons than Harlequin and Punchinello, to those who possessed taste and talents sufficient to execute the masterly scenes, borrowed from the Grecian Drama. Injustice, however,—and we call that law unjust which devotes to general infamy any profession of which it nevertheless tolerates the practice, is usually inconsistent. Several individual play-actors in Rome rose to high public esteem, and to the enjoyment of great wealth. Roscius was the friend and companion of Piso and of Sylla, |