((Groans and glances over shoulder again.)) Run along home, there's a good fellow. ((Urges him toward exit.))", etc. Tranio has a chance for very lively business: a sickly smile for the usurer, lightning glances of apprehension towards Theopropides, with an occasional intimate groan aside to the audience. Other farcical scenes of the many that may be cited as calling for particularly vivacious business and gesture are, e.g., Cas. 621 ff., where Pardalisca befools Lysidamus by timely fainting, Rud. 414 ff., where Sceparnio flirts with Ampelisca, and the quarrel scene, Rud. 485 ff. (121) The last four passages quoted in translation are by no means lacking in artistic humor and a measure of reality, but they imply a pronounced heightening of the actions and emotions of everyday life and lose their humor unless presented in the broad spirit that stamps them as belonging to the plane of farce. We now pass on to motives where the dialogue aims at effects manifestly unnatural and where verisimilitude is sacrificed to the joke, as we have seen it is in the employment of "bombast," "true burlesque," etc. The first of these motives is a stream of copious abuse, as in Per. 406 ff., where Toxilus servos and Dordalus leno exchange Rabelaisian compliments. "TOX. ((Hopping about with rabid gestures.)) You filthy pimp, you mud-heap, you common dung-hill, you besmirched, corrupt, law-breaking decoy, you public sewer,... robber, mobber, jobber,...!

Tr Monologue from The Dramatic Values in Plautus

About this piece

Rehearse Tr's monologue

More from The Dramatic Values in Plautus