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Andria (The Girl from Andros) by Terence (166 BC)

‘There’s scarcely a man to be found who’ll stay faithful to a woman.’
(Mysis the servant)

‘A father shouldn’t be too hard on his children whatever their faults.’
(Chremes)

The astonishingly detailed production notes, attached to the play in antiquity, tell us that Andria was first performed at the Megalensian Games in 166 BC. It is based on an original but unnamed play by the Greek playwright, Menander.

The set consists, as usual, of the front doors of two houses set next to each other, the house of Simo, father of the hero, and of Glycerium, the young female ‘love interest’

Back story

The play is set in Athens. There are two middle-aged men, Simo and Chysemum. Simo has a son, Pamphilus. Pamphilus has seduced and impregnated a young woman named Glycerium and has promised to marry her. But his father, Simo, has other ideas and has promised Pamphilus in marriage to the daughter of his friend Chremes, Philumena.

Everyone has always assumed that Glycerium was the sister of the girl she came to Athens with three years earlier, who was named Chryses. They came to Athens together from the island of Andros (hence ‘the girl from Andros’). Chryses set up as a courtesan and acquired a devoted following of young gentlemen. Sadly, she got sick and died just before the action of the play starts.

It was at the funeral of Chryses that Pamphilus first publicly revealed his loved for Glycerium when the latter ventured a little too close to the funeral pyre on which her friend was burning, and Pamphilus promptly leapt forward, embraced her, pulled her back and ended up kissing her in full sight of all the other mourners. His father, Simo, witnessed this and was appalled.

Meanwhile, young Pamphilus has a friend, Charinus, who is himself in love, with a young woman named Philumena, the daughter of Pamphilus’s father’s friend, Chremes. That’s what the ‘double plot’ means in practice – two young men in love with two young women; both in similar plights which are then ‘treated’ differently by the plot.

It’s worth noting that Glycerium, Pamphilus’s lady love and, in a sense, the crux of the plot, never actually appears onstage. She does, however, have one line – when she cries out from inside her house as she gives birth (exactly like Phaedria, another invisible love interest, does in Plautus’s Aulularis).

But this is one more line than Charinus’s lady love Philumena, the daughter of Chremes, is awarded, as she never appears at all. They are almost invisible cogs in the machine of the plot.

Rather than the love interests, the central figure of the play, as so often, is the canny slave, in this case Pamphilus’s slave, Davos, who devises a cunning plan to rescue his master and unite him with his girl. This plan goes badly wrong to begin with but he manages to recover it at the last minute, so that the play ends with a happy marriage.

The plot

Sosia and Simo

Simo, the father, explains the backstory of the play to the elderly family freed slave Sosia: the story of Chryses coming to Athens, her success in garnering lovers, how Simo knows that his son Pamphilus hung round in their set but wasn’t actually in love with her. How Simo’s neighbour Chremes has offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to Pamphilus, and that today is the day set for the wedding feast.

Simo goes on to say that a few days after he and Chremes sealed the deal, this neighbouring courtesan Chryses passed away. Simo attended the funeral and it was there that he saw his son dash forward to prevent Glycerium getting too close to Chryses’ pyre. Then Chremes got to hear about Pamphilus’ love for Glycerium and so called off the wedding of Pamphilus and his own daughter.

Sosia is confused: if the wedding has been called off, how come caterers are arriving and setting up for the wedding feast? Simo replies that he has two very specific aims: one, if Pamphilus refuses to take part in the wedding feast he’s staging, then he’ll have a real reason to rebuke him; two, if his rogue of a servant Davos has any tricks up his sleeve, Simo hopes he’ll deploy them here, at the fake wedding, rather than at the real one. [This slightly convoluted logic explains why a wedding feast is in preparation, even though the bride’s father, Chremes, has cancelled her participation in it.]

So the upshot of this rather complicated story is that Simo wants Sosia to supervise the setting up of the feast and keep his eye open for scams. So, with these instructions the freed slave Sosia goes through the door into Simo’s house.

Enter Davos

Davos is Pamphilus’s smart young slave who will emerge as the main driver of the play. Simo warns him that if he tries to pull off any smart tricks to help Pamphilus, Simo will have him whipped senseless then sent to the mills. As with all of Plautus’s plays, I am appalled at the way extreme violence is routinely threatened to all the slaves and for laughs! Simo exits leaving Davos alone onstage.

Davos soliloquises

Davos explains he wants to help his master, Pamphilus, but is understandably worried about getting into trouble with his actual owner, Simo – the man who just threatened him with a whipping!

Davos goes on to explain that Pamphilus and Glycerium are behaving like naughty children, specially as Glycerium is pregnant. They’re promoting the story that Glycerium isn’t Chryses sister at all, that she was shipwrecked as a baby off the coast of Andros. She was in the care of a merchant and they were both taken in by a kindly local. The merchant then died leaving the local to raise the orphan girl Glycerium alongside his own daughter, Chryses. But – and this is the important point – not only are the girls not sisters, but Glycerium is a freeborn Athenian. This, apparently, really matters. If she was the daughter of a slave and had grown up to become a courtesan, she would be no fit wife for a wealthy man’s son like Pamphilus. But if it can be proven that she is freeborn, that changes everything. She would be a worthy bride.

Having explained all this to the audience, Davos exits.

Enter Mysis

Mysis is a maid of Glycerium. She comes out of Glycerium’s house, as so often in these plays, calling back something to someone inside. She is being sent to fetch a noted midwife, Lesbia, to handle the delivery of Glycerium’s baby.

Enter Pamphilus

Pamphilus has heard from his father that the latter has organised his wedding today, without even telling him! He rants and raves and says he is cursed since he can’t refuse his father but doesn’t want to go through with marriage to a woman he doesn’t love.

Mysis steps forward and Pamphilus asks how her mistress i.e. Pamphilus’s beloved, Glycerium, is. Mysis replies that Glycerium is scared to death of giving birth and that she’ll be abandoned by Pamphilus. Upset, Pamphilus swears he will stick by her. He quotes the deathbed scene in which ailing Chrysis left Glycerium to Pamphilus’s care to protect and look after.

PAMPHILUS: Oh Mysis, Mysis, the words Chryses used of her are forever written in my heart. (p.51)

Pamphilus regards it as a sacred duty. Exit Mysis to fetch the midwife, Pamphilus moves to the side of the stage.

Enter Charinus

Enter Charinus and his servant Byrria. Charinus is Pamphilus’s best friend. He is in love with Philumena, who is a) the daughter of Chremes, Simo’s best friend and b) the very woman Pamphilus is supposed to be marrying today. He has just heard the news about the wedding feast and is distraught. Byrria is his down to earth slave, delivering cynical punchlines to Charinus playing the distraught lover.

Charinus and Pamphilus

Pamphilus moves back to centre stage and Charinus confronts him. Begs him not to marry Philumena today, as he himself is in love with her. Tells Pamphilus if he married Philumena it is the last he’ll see of him. Pamphilus quickly assures Charinus he is not in love with Philumena and has no intention of marrying her if he can help it. They make a pact: Pamphilus will do everything he can to avoid marrying Philumena if, at the same time, Charinus does everything he can to win her.

Enter Davos

Davos is excited to find his master and Charinus. He thinks he has the solution to their problems. He’s been hanging round Chremes’ house and there’s absolutely no preparation for a wedding there. So he tells Pamphilus and Charinus that the wedding feast is a fake. Simo is faking a wedding feast so that, if Pamphilus pulls out, he can land all the blame on him.

Charinus is delighted to learn it isn’t a real wedding, but Davos points out that just because Pamphilus is not marrying Philumena doesn’t necessarily mean Charinus will win her. He needs to go and ‘canvas’ her father’s friends. [Interesting insight into ancient marriage practices.]

Davos now proposes his plan. He tells Pamphilus to agree to the marriage. That way his father can have absolutely no reproach against him. ‘But what if I end up accidentally being married to Philumena?’ Pamphilus protests. Davos insists there’s no danger of that, because Chremes won’t let her marry him, because of his public display of affection for Glycerium. With Davos’s plan,:

  • Pamphilus will gain his father’s good wishes
  • all the blame for the failed wedding will fall on Chremes
  • and his father will be all the more favourable to finding him another bride

At that point they’ll manoeuvre him into accepting Glycerium. Pamphilus is understandably very doubtful about all this, but Davos talks him into it.

Enter Simo, shadowed by Byrria

Pamphilus’s father enters, but he is being tailed by Byrria, who’s been told by Charinus to follow him about and report everyone’s actions and responses. So he spies on the others while himself invisible.

1. When Simo tells Pamphilus that today is the day of his wedding, Pamphilus astonishes him by saying he will be guided by him in everything and will marry whoever he wants. Simo is astonished and Pamphilus meekly goes into the family house.

2. Byrria spied all thus, unseen, and is horrified because he thinks Pamphilus is reneging on his deal with his master. Byrria goes off to tell his master the bad news, leaving just Davos and Simo onstage.

Simo cross-questions Davos, convinced something is going on but Davos remains straight-faced and says he’s sure Pamphilus will obey his father. Davos tries to throw Simo off the scent by telling his son does have one grudge against him – that he’s tight with money and scrimping on this wedding feast. That nettles Simo.

Enter Mysis and Lesbia

Things are going just right when enter Mysis the serving girl who’s fetched Lesbia the midwife. As they go into Glycerium’s house they chatter for just long enough to blow up Davos’s plan, because Mysis tells Lesbia what a lovely young gentleman Pamphilus is, how he has sworn to remain loyal to her, and how she is about to have his baby!!!!

They enter the house and Simo explodes with indignation. But…at that moment Glycerium calls out in her labour pains to the goddess Juno Lucina and…Simo decides it’s all a con. It’s too contrived. She isn’t really having a baby, this is all some scam of Davos’s to horrify Chremes into cancelling the marriage.

Davos takes advantage of Simo’s misinterpretation to say that, ‘Yes, Simo is correct, it’s all a cunning scheme hatched by Glycerium to wreck the marriage and steal Pamphilus. Her next step will be to borrow a baby from somewhere and place it on Simo’s doorstep as if it is hers and Pamphilus’s.’

Simo thanks Davos for his loyal service and the latter goes into the house, leaving Simo to tell the audience that his next step is to ask Chremes to agree to hand over his daughter for the wedding.

Enter Chremes

Simo describes how he and Chremes have been friends since boyhood, and now he wants his daughter to marry Pamphilus. Chremes is sceptical, what about the foreign woman. Simo assures him that the young couple have fallen out, been trading insults, and so now is the time to quickly marry him to Philumena, and get him to redirect his affections into a respectable channel. Chremes asks how he knows this. Simo replies that Davos told him and he calls Davos out of his house.

Enter Davos

Simo tells Davis he has now, reluctantly, come round to trusting him and believes him when he says his son, Pamphilus, is a reformed character and definitely wants to marry Philumena. And that he’s just persuaded Chremes, here, to marry her off today! (Chremes exits to go home and prepare Philumena for the wedding.)

Davos keeps up a running commentary of asides to the audience in which he comically reacts to this disastrous news. Chremes agreeing to marry off his daughter?! The wedding going ahead?! This is a catastrophe. What can he do?

Exit Simo, enter Pamphilus

Simo goes into his house to tell Pamphilus the good news, while Davos laments that he’s going to get the blame for everything. And sure enough a few moments later Pamphilus bursts out of the house, furious. He accuses Davos of screwing everything up and asks him what punishment he thinks he deserves? Davos astonishes me by saying ‘Crucifixion’ (p.69). The casualness with which these violent punishments of slaves are tossed about never ceases to flabbergast me.

Enter Charinus

Charinus has just received Byrria’s mistaken report that Pamphilus intends to go ahead with the wedding, and now runs onstage to deliver a soliloquy on the perfidy of friends. Now he intends to find Pamphilus and heap abuse on him.

Pamphilus hears all this from the side of the stage then steps forward and apologises to Charinus. Charinus accuses Pamphilus of only falling in love with Philumena after he, Charinus, had declared his love for her. Pamphilus tells him he’s got it all wrong. It was Davos who persuaded him to agree to the marriage. They then both turn on poor Davos, who tries to defend himself, saying he’s a loyal slave and works day and night in his master’s best interests. Anyway, has anyone else got a better plan?

Enter Mysis

Mysis comes out of Glycerium’s house [the reader tries to ignore the absurdity of everyone discussing the inconvenience of Pamphilus’s foreign lover when her house is right next door to Pamphilus’s.] Mysis tells Pamphilus her mistress is desperate for him. Pamphilus assures Mysis that he will remain loyal to Glycerium no matter what.

During all this Davos comes up with another plan. He tells the two men he’s in a hurry to implement it so Pamphilus goes into Glycerium’s house to see his beloved. Charinus then pesters Davos to help him. Davos says his first loyalty is to his master but he’ll see what he can do. And Charinus exits, going home.

Davos tells Mysis to wait here for him and pops into Glycerium’s house. He re-emerges with the newborn baby and gives it to Mysis and tells her to lay it on Simo’s front door. He wants her to do it so that, later, if anyone asks him whether he did it, he can answer with a clear conscience that he didn’t.

Enter Chremes

But his cunning plan is interrupted when along comes old Chremes, father of the bride. Davos runs off, leaving Mysis alone.

Chremes is congratulating himself on having made all the preparations for the marriage of his daughter when he sees the baby on Simo’s doorstep. What is all this?

At this point Davos re-enters, talking out loud and pretending to have just come from the busy market. He spots the baby on the doorstep and loudly asks Mysis who the baby is and what it’s doing there (in order to persuade Chremes he has nothing to do with it). Davos cross questions Mysis very loudly for the benefit of Chremes who is listening. Mysis is bewildered by Davos asking questions he knows the answer to but he hisses at her to play along.

And so Chremes overhears Mysis explain that this baby is Glycerium’s and that Pamphilus is the father. Davos denies it and pretends to accuse Mysis of being part of a monstrous plot, saying the baby was smuggled in by the midwife and is not Pamphilus’s and is part of a plot to discredit Pamphilus and put Chremes off allowing his daughter to marry him.

Of course Chremes has overheard all this, in fact Davos staged the loud dialogue for his benefit. Now he steps forward and Davos play acts surprise that he’s been here all along. Chremes is predictably outraged by all he’s heard and insists on going into Simo’s house to confront him.

Enter Crito

At just this moment when things are hanging in the balance, enter Crito. He is a middle-aged man from Athens, cousin to the dead Chryses. He tells us that Chryses’ friend Glycerium appears to have inherited Chryses’ property but it should really go to him by rights. This is because Glycerium has always been thought of as Chryses’ sister but she isn’t. Crito is here to prove the story that she is not Chryses’ sister but an unrelated foundling. Of course he’s got a vested interest in doing so because then, as her nearest kin, he’ll get Chryses’ inheritance.

He’s already known to Mysis, who welcomes him and then takes him into the house to see Glycerium.

Simo and Chremes

Simo and Chremes come out of Simo’s house. Chremes is upset by what Simo is asking him, namely to marry his daughter to Pamphilus who is clearly in love with another woman – to marry his daughter into a loveless marriage, purely in an attempt to ‘reform’ young Pamphilus.

Chremes was willing to go along with it out of their old friendship, but now he hears rumours that the woman is a free citizen of Attica (the wider region surrounding Athens) and not only, that, but has had a baby by Pamphilus!

Enter Davos

At just this moment Davos comes out of Glycerium’s house rubbing his hands with glee because of the impact Crito’s arrival is going to have on everything.

Davos comes out the front door and stumbles into Simo and Chremes who promptly accuse him of lying when he said Pamphilus had argued with Glycerium, lying about their baby, and lying about Glycerium’s status as an Attican citizen.

Davos stutters with excuses and then blusters on about Crito having arrived and declaring that Glycerium is a free citizen of Attica, but Simo has had enough and calls out another one of his slaves, big lumbering threatening Dromo, to grab Davos and ‘string him up’ ready for a whipping. Dromo hustles Davos off into Simo’s house to be tied up.

At all these moments of physical threats to slaves I remember Mary Beard’s words that a working definition of a slave was someone you could offer physical violence to with no comeback (as long as it was your slave, that is).

Enter Pamphilus

Simo yells into Glycerium’s house for his son who comes out. They are both ready to give up. Simo is exhausted and tells his son that, since he is ready to disobey his father and shame his homeland in his infatuation with this woman, then why not just do it. He washes his hands of him (p.83).

SIMO: Why harass my old age with the folly of a boy like this?

Instead of yelping with joy, Pamphilus is overcome with remorse and offers to give up his beloved and do whatever his father wishes (p.84).

Simo accuses him of having arranged for this witness to appear to prove that Glycerium is freeborn as if it’s a really big deal. Pamphilus swears he hasn’t, that it’s only a coincidence and asks to call Crito out to prove so.

Chremes persuades Simo to accede to this wish. In fact it’s really notable how mellow and forgiving Chremes becomes. As father and son recriminate each other, Chremes intervenes to tell Simo he ought to be more forgiving. All the characters are, deep down, nice and well meaning.

Re-enter Crito

Turns out that Crito and Chremes know each other, so Crito’s bona fides are established from the start. Nonetheless, Simo is witheringly scornful and accuses him of being paid to bear witness that Glycerium is a freeborn woman because that makes Pamphilus’s marriage to her socially acceptable.

For his part, Crito gets very cross at being treated like a liar and proceeds to tell the key backstory which transforms the situation: 20 years ago a citizen of Attica was shipwrecked on the coast of Andros. With him was a small girl. The traveller lost everything in the wreck and the first person to offer help was the father of the little girl who grew up to be Chrysis. Well, this benefactor who helped the shipwreckees out was a relative of Crito (who is telling the story). The shipwrecked man died.

Suddenly Chremes becomes very interested and begs Crito to tell him the name of the shipwrecked man. When Crito reveals it was Phania, who claimed to be a citizen of Rhamnus, Chremes is thunderstruck: Phania was his brother! And he was taking Chremes’s young daughter to come and meet him (Chremes) when they were shipwrecked.

The identification is clinched when Pamphilus tells Chremes that Glycerium is not the girl from Andros’s original name – her original name was Pasibula. In other words – Glycerium is Chremes’s long-lost daughter!!!

At a stroke:

  1. Simo is reconciled to his son marrying Glycerium (‘The truth has reconciled me to everything’)
  2. Chremes is delighted to be reunited with his long-lost daughter
  3. Chremes is double delighted to have such a worthy son in law, Pamphilus, and offers him a dowry of 60,000 drachmas on the spot, which he accepts
  4. and Pamphilus:

Oh, I’m beside myself, my head’s in a whirl with hope and fear and delight at this marvellous, unexpected, immense good fortune! (p.86)

Pamphilus says Davos must help Glycerium over to their house for a celebration. ‘Oh, er, well, he’s a bit tied up,’ his father replies. He runs inside to get his slaves to untie him and a few moments later Davos comes out rubbing his arms and shoulders.

Charinus enters but unobserved by the other two, while Pamphilus is telling Davos that all his troubles are over – that Glycerium has been revealed as Chremes’s long-lost daughter and that both Chremes and Pamphilus’s dad have agreed to their marriage.

Davos is delighted, but not as much as Charinus for this means Pamphilus won’t be marrying Philumena after all, leaving her free for him!

Rush ending

The play ends in a spectacularly hurried flurry of phrases because Pamphilus announces they can’t wait for Chremes to come out of the house and have to go through the whole fol-de-rol of Charinus asking for the hand of his other daughter in marriage. Instead Pamphilus and Charinus both hurry into Glycerium’s house to fetch her to the feast, leaving Davos onstage to wind up with the extremely brief words:

You needn’t wait for them to come out again; the other betrothal and any other business will take place in there. Now give us your applause! (p.90)

Thoughts

Double plot

I’ve read that Terence’s contribution to dramaturgy was developing the ‘double plot’ which a) makes the plays more complicated and sophisticated b) gives more scope for comedy. But as you can see, although there’s a sort of parallel between the two young men Pamphilus and Charinus being in love with two young women, Glycerium and Philumena, it’s very one-sided. All the emphasis is on the Pamphilus-Glycerium story and Charinus only has a handful of scenes, in most of which he whines unattractively, and Philumena never makes an appearance.

Above all, none of it is very funny, certainly not as laugh-out-loud funny as Plautus. Probably in performance a lot of the scenes which feature asides, especially the ones featuring Davos, these might be funny if done well by a good comic actor. But there is nothing intrinsically funny in any of the scenes. It’s cleverly and elaborately constructed, it moves at a cracking pace, but it lacks the wisecracking, rackety, gagfest feel of a Plautus play.

Related to this is the way the characters are all, at bottom, nice and well meaning. Their opinions, like the two I’ve quoted as epigraphs to this review, are eminently sensible. This explains why Terence’s plays were recommended to be taught in schools by no less of an earnest figure than Martin Luther. The ending doesn’t come as a shock and comic surprise – it feels more like the inevitable conclusion given that everyone is so basically nice. There is no wicked baddie driving the action, just a few genuine misunderstandings and misaligned intentions which take a little sorting out and then everyone can be happy.

Credit

Page references are to the 1976 Penguin paperback edition of Terence: The Comedies edited and translated by Betty Radice.

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by Simon on April 4, 2022  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on April 4, 2022

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Pseudolus by Plautus (191 BC)

‘She was mine to do as I liked with.’
(Ballio the pimp about Calidorus’s lady love, the slave-courtesan Phoenicium, page 230)

Of the 20 or so plays by Plautus which have survived from antiquity, this is the longest. We have the precise date of production, 191 BC. As so often it is set in the street in front of two houses and the lead figure is a canny slave. Yet the real star of the show turns out to be Ballio, the wretched pimp.

Setup

Calidorus is the stock young man. He is in love with Phoenicium, who is a slave-prostitute ‘singing girl’ who belongs to the wretched pimp, Ballio. The play opens with Calidorus showing his father’s chief slave and loyal servant, Pseudolus, a letter he’s just received from Phoenicium telling Calidorus that she’s been sold by her master to a Macedonian officer who just has to complete the payment of 2,000 drachmas and will take her away forever tomorrow. After some banter, Pseudolus promises to devise some way of getting her back or else he’ll pay Calidorus 2,000 drachmas. They hide to one side as Ballio appears.

The plot

Enter Ballio

In one of the two houses onstage lives Ballio, the pimp. It’s his birthday today. He enters brandishing a whip and terrifying his male slaves. He calls them lazy good-for-nothings and whips at least one of them. Then he gives them all chores to do as he’s planning to hold a feast to impress some VIPs.

The slaves go off about their chores, then Ballio calls out his female slaves, presumably his ‘courtesans’ i.e. sex workers, among whom is Calidorus’s true love, Phoenicium. Ballio shouts at the women slaves that today he will set one of them free, but the criterion will be, which one can get her lover to bring him, Ballio, the most extravagant birthday presents. Otherwise what’s the point of keeping such a harem of greedy lazy slaves?

Ballio goes through each of his ‘girls’ by name, pointing out the sectors of the market they specialise, namely the corn merchants (Hedylium), the butchers (Aeschrodora), the olive oil men (Xystilis) and finally Phoenicium, who he characterises as a gentleman’s pet, always promising to bring him the fee for her freedom but never actually delivering it (p.224).

Ballio dismisses the women, while in their hiding place Calidorus and Pseudolus bicker about what to do. Ballio is just setting off for town with his boy when Pseudolus calls out to him. After some banter in which it becomes clear the Ballio knows and dislikes our boys, Pseudolus takes command of the conversation and says Calidorus is sorry for not having come up with the cash to buy Phoenicium. Ballio has no sympathy: he should borrow it from a friend or steal it from his father. After Calidorus has stopped being scandalised, Pseudolus takes the lead again and promises Ballio he’ll come up with the money somehow within three days.

Ballio teases Calidorus by telling him Phoenicium is not for sale…at which point Calidorus rejoices and says Ballio is a second Jupiter and he needs to send Pseudolus to buy a lamb whose giblets they can sacrifice to this wonderful fellow. But, Ballio continues, Phoenicium is not for sale because she’s already been sold (p.230).

In a comic passage Pseudolus and Calidorus stand either side of Ballio and call him every abusive term they can come up with, but it is water in a sieve, he doesn’t care: he happily admits he killed his own parents to avoid having to pay for their care, he is a worm and it doesn’t bother him. And in that spirit he tells them that the Macedonian officer has only put down 1,500 of the 2,000 drachmas he’s contracted to pay for Phoenicium. If the boys can being him, Ballio, the full 2,000 today, maybe he’ll change his mind. And with an evil grin he sets off for the market.

Pseudolus soliloquy 1

Pseudolus then explains to Calidorus that he has a cunning plan, but he needs Calidorus to provide a friend, an intelligent, reliable friend to play a role in his plan. So Calidorus exists to find one.

Pseudolus is left onstage to admit to the audience that he doesn’t have the slightest idea or plan he just wanted to get rid of Calidorus. Much more likely is that he might be able to wangle the 2,000 drachmas out of his master Simo, who just at this moment happens along with his neighbour Callipho.

Simo

Simo tells the audience his son Calidorus is the talk of the town, everyone knows he’s desperate to buy his courtesan girlfriend but doesn’t have the money. Callipho says he shouldn’t be so hard on his son after all he was a tearaway and libertine in his own youth. They both spot Pseudolus listening to them and approach and say hello.

A feature of this play is it is quite slow moving. This is because the characters spend quite a lot of time in extended conversation: first Calidorus and Pseudolus with Ballio, now Pseudolus with Simo and Callipho – extended pleasantries and banter. Basically Simo tells Pseudolus he knows all about his son’s plight and is well aware that Pseudolus is planning to extract 2,000 drachmas out of him, but assures him it won’t work. Pseudolus declares that, on the contrary, he will get it out of him, which both Simo and Callipho consider a cheeky threat.

CALLIPHO: ‘Ye gods! The man’s a living marvel – if he can be as good as his word.’

Not only that, Pseudolus assures the two sceptical old men that before the day is through he will have won not one but two victories: he is going to extract the 2,000 drachmas from Simo and he is going to remove the girl from Ballio’s grasp! Pseudolus says, if he manages in the former, will his master give him the money and his freedom? Reluctantly, Simo agrees.

Callipho finds all this very amusing and when Pseudolus announces he needs him for his plans, happily agrees to cancel his planned trip to the country to do so. What’s more, he cheerfully tells Pseudolus that if Simo refuses to give him the money he, Callipho, will. All very relaxed and amused. Callipho goes into his house, Simo goes off into town.

Pseudolus soliloquy 2

Pseudolus not only speaks directly to the audience, he breaks the conceptual fourth wall by talking about the play itself, saying he currently has no idea how he’s going to pull it all off but what’s a play without surprises, so he begs our indulgence while he goes for a think and, meantime, there will be a musical interlude.

Musical interlude with a flute player

Pseudolus re-enters and fools around making a speech in the grand style describing how he will mount a siege and storm the house of his enemy i.e. Ballio. He’s in mod flow when he spies someone coming, and hides.

Enter Harpax

Harpax is a soldier, the representative of the Macedonian officer who’s put a down payment on Phoenicium. He talks out loud as he tries to figure out which of these houses is Ballio’s which gives Pseudolus the opportunity to step forward and pretend to be Ballio’s steward, Syrus. Harpax says he’s come with a purse of the outstanding sum, 500 drachmas, plus a sealed letter and the personal token of his master, the Macedonian officer, as agreed with Ballio. Pseudolus says his ‘master’ Ballio is out right now, and tries to persuade him to give him the purse but Harpax isn’t that dumb. He does, on the other hand, give him the sealed letter to give to Ballio, before announcing he’s going back to his inn to have lunch and a nap and for Pseudolus to send a message to him when Ballio returns. And so he exits.

Pseudolus soliloquy 3

Pseudolus tells us this is the lucky break he needed and launches into extended philosophising about the best laid plans and Lady Luck and so on, when he spies young Calidorus returning with a friend.

Enter Calidorus and Charinus

Pseudolus likes putting on funny voices and so adopts a tone of royal grandiloquence to greet his master. But he quickly comes to have a low opinion of the friend, Charinus, who is nettled by his disrespect. Nonetheless he shows Calidorus the letter and token.

Pseudolus says he will need a man. A slave? suggests Charinus. Yes. Well Charinus just happens to know a slave his master has freshly sent from their country estate to here, in Athens, named Simia. Perfect. And is he a slippery eel and trickster? Yes. And might Charinus happen to have a soldier’s cloak at his house? Yes. Pseudolus has gained new respect for Charinus, he’s a veritable charitable institution.

The plan? They’ll dress up this newly arrived slave as a a soldier, give him the letter and token and 500 drachmas and he will pretend to the Macedonian’s man and secure Phoenicium from the pimp. Pseudolus tells the chaps to go and prepare him.

Pseudolus soliloquy 4

Two enjoyable features of the play:

  1. Pseudolus amusingly uses military metaphors to describe how he is laying sieges and strategems to take Ballio’s fortress by storm.
  2. Pseudolus in a very post-modern way keeps referring to the play he’s actually in. So when Calidorus and Charinus ask him how he got the better of Harpax, he simply replies that the audience has seen everything so there’s no point repeating it (p.245)

He also leaves the stage.

Ballio’s slave boy

A touching soliloquy from Ballio’s slave boy describing how being an ugly boy in a whorehouse is a miserable fate. Ballio threatened everyone with the whip if they couldn’t come up with fine presents for him, but he hasn’t got anything.

Ballio returns with a cook

Ballio has hired a cook and assistants for his feast. It is typical of this play that there’s quite a long passage of dialogue devoted entirely to fleshing out his character, in which Ballio insults the cook for being an evil looking wretch and the cook cannily defends himself by saying he is always last to be hired because is more expensive and better quality than the ruck.

As with the role of the ‘table companion’ in Menaechmi, this gives a vivid sense of the forum as the place where people went to be hired for jobs for the day.

Anyway, Ballio orders his ‘ugly boy’ to keep a sharp watch on the cook and his assistants to make sure he doesn’t pinch anything. When they’ve all gone into his house, Ballio gives a little soliloquy in which he explains that he bumped into Calidorus’s father in the market and the latter warned him that Pseudolus has got a cunning plan to wangle Phoenicium off him. So he’s going to tell all his slaves to be on the lookout for the tricky Pseudolus.

Pseudolus and Simia

Enter Pseudolus with Simia, the smooth, handsome young slave Charinus promised. He is dressed up in a soldier’s outfit and very pleased with himself, super confident of his ability to ‘fake and fiddle’, rather to Pseudolus’s irritation. Pseudolus keeps asking if he remembers what he is so say and Simia crossly says yes yes yes.

As with all the other scenes and exchanges in this play, the two pages of Pseudolus fussing over Simia and the latter getting increasingly irritated, are not really necessary to the plot, but add colour and depth.

Ballio comes out his front door, still fussing about the cook he’s hired and Simia steps boldly forward, pretending to be the soldier Harpax finding his way. Pseudolus stays in hiding, wincing at more or less every one of Simia’s cocky remarks. But, to cut a long story, short, Simia hands over the letter and token and succeeds in persuading Ballio that he is the emissary of the Macedonian officer. Ballio reads the letter (which is quite rude about him), Simia hands over the money, Ballio says, Right, come and get her, and they go into his house.

Pseudolus steps out of hiding. All is going well but his nerves are wracking, any number of things could still go wrong: his master might turn up, the real Harpax might turn up, or Simia might go over to the enemy for a cash reward!

In the event the door opens and Simia and Phoenicium emerge and are waved off by Ballio who goes back into his house. Pseudolus hurries to join them and says, Quick, quick, while the coast is clear! and so they make off. Worth noting that the military metaphors deployed by Pseudolus are echoed by Simia who is, of course, dressed as a soldier. The entire thing has a comic thread of military pastiche running through it.

PSEUDOLUS: ‘Forward march! For victory and the cup of triumph!’

Enter Simo

Simo is Calidorus’s father and the subject of the bet with Pseudolus. He now enters with a view to checking with Ballio how things are going. He says hello, they talk and Ballio is so confident that the deal has gone  his way he hustles Simo into making a bet with him: Ballio promises to give Simo 2,000 drachmas (and a girl thrown in) if Calidorus gets possession of the girl today. Simo has nothing to lose so he shakes on the bet.

When Simo asks what this Harpax was like, Ballio, like Pseudolus, breaks the illusion of reality by saying Harpax used the usual type of gags used in this kind of comedy, and was used the stock terms given to pimps in comedies. Part of the enjoyment is the way the comic characters know they are in a play, readily admit it and play up to it.

Anyway, Ballio assures him on his life that Pseudolus won’t be able to pull one of his tricks, it’s too late, he has handed over the girl to the Macedonian officer’s man, who was bearing his letter and token, there’s absolutely no way anything can go wrong.

Enter Harpax

Oops. At which point the real Macedonian emissary, Harpax, arrives. He gives a little speech about how the good servant is always thinking of his master’s best interests, even if he’s not physically there, giving orders. This is interesting because it’s almost identical to the speech on the same subject given by Messenio in Menaechmi – the point being it’s obviously a stock sentiment given to the Good Slave in this kind of play.

Anyway, he waited at the inn for the fellow claiming to be Ballio’s steward (in reality Pseudolus) to come and get him, but he never showed up so here he is, taking the initiative in carrying out his master’s orders.

So comic misunderstanding. At first Ballio sees a stranger approaching and tells Simo here’s business for his whorehouse. He’ll take his money and be glad. But then Harpax declares his is the emissary of the Macedonian and has the money for the girl. At which point, instead of realising he’s been diddled, Ballio chats aside to Simo and declares that this must be a fake soldier put up to it by that rascal Pseudolus – well, he won’t fool old Ballio!

Ballio and Simo proceed to take the mickey out of Harpax, grabbing his cloak and hat and sword, and saying his officer must have rescued him from prison and insinuating that he’s gay and generally ragging him under the assumption that he’s a fake. But, inevitably, they begin to falter as Harpax sticks to his story and goes on to say he gave his master’s letter and token to a slave from this very house, one Syrus. Then Ballio asks Harpax for a description of this ‘Syrus’ and Harpax describes Pseudolus to a t. It’s interesting to learn what Pseudolus is meant to look like:

HARPAX: Ginger hair, fat belly, thick legs, dark skin, big head, sharp eyes, red face and very large feet. (p.263)

With horror Harpax realises what’s happened. Pseudolus has had him after all. It was the earlier Harpax who was fake, this is the real one. Not only that but Harpax now insists on having his 2,000 drachmas back and Simo chips in, insisting on Ballio coughing up the 2,000 drachmas he confidently bet him 5 minutes earlier.

Ballio realises he is lost. Harpax insists on marching him off to the bank to collect his 2,000 drachmas. Ballio just has time for an aside to the audience, bleakly saying ‘birthday’? This is more like his death day!

Simo soliloquises

Left alone onstage Simo tells us he’s going to spring a surprise on Pseudolus, but not the kind of one you usually get in comedies like this, a surprise of whips and chains. No, he is full of admiration at the canny trick Pseudolus has pulled off, putting Odysseus’s trick which won the war at Troy in the shade. No, he’s going to get the 2,000 drachmas he wagered him and have it read to hand over next time they meet.

Drunk Pseudolus

And rather than any more dramatic encounters or revelations or dialogue, the play ends with Pseudolus staggering onstage, plastered, and drunkenly telling the audience what a fabulous feast they’re having inside. Calidorus has gotten married to Phoenicium, everyone’s drinking and singing at the wedding feast – and Pseudolus does a drunken little dance onstage.

Anyway, drunk though he is, he’s come to see his old master i.e. Simo, and now knocks on his door. Simo opens the door prepared to be gracious but Pseudolus, very drunk, embraces him and burps in his face. When Simo hands him the big sack of silver coins he owes him, Pseudolus at first plans to drag Simo through the streets, as in a victory triumph, humiliating him. But Simo gets down on his knees and begs not to be humiliated and so Pseudolus, in a lazy drunken way, says: Of course, not, can’t have that can we? And instead makes it clear he’s inviting the old ‘master’ to the wedding feast of his son.

At which point they stop and ask themselves, as they always do in Plautus’s plays – what about the audience, are you going to invite them? And, as usual, one of them points out there are far too many to invite to a little house, so the next best thing – would they kindly applaud?

Thoughts

Not at all ‘boy meets girl’ comedy, is it? ‘Clever slave outwits pimp’ doesn’t have quite the same ring, but that’s what this is.

Not only is it not a ‘boy meets girl’ story but the girl in question – I wanted to write ‘doesn’t even appear’ but she does appear, and she does at least have a name, unlike the ‘wife’ and ‘father’ in Menaechmi who remain unnamed cyphers. But it’s the briefest of appearances, walking once across the stage as she’s taken away by Simia-posing-as-Harpax.

I’ve pointed out that most of the characters in Plautus plays are pawns in the machinations of the plot, but it’s hard to deny that the female characters are very often the pawniest of the pawns.

Credit

Page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of The Pot of Gold and Other Plays by Plautus, translated by E.F. Watling and published by Penguin in 1965.

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by Simon on March 30, 2022  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on March 30, 2022

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/03/30/pseudolus-plautus/

Mostellaria (The Ghost Story) by Plautus (c.210 BC)

The plot

We are in Athens in front of the house of Theoproprides, a Greek merchant, and his neighbour Simo. Theoproprides has a son, Philolaches, who is in love with a courtesan Philematium (who has an elderly woman attendant, Scapha). Philolaches recently bought Philematium her freedom for 3,000 drachmas which he borrowed off a moneylender for the purpose. He also has a best friend, Callidamates, who has a girlfriend of his own, Delphium.

The play opens with a rough country slave up from the family’s farm, Grumio, giving us a bit of backstory – telling us that the master, Theoproprides, has been away for three years and during that time the family’s servus callidus (clever slave) Tranio has been living high on the hog and corrupting the master’s son, Philolaches.

This is confirmed in a scene where we see Philolaches eavesdropping on his pretty courtesan and her maid chatting, and even more so then when his friend Callidamates turns up, drunk off his face and continually falling over or falling asleep, only propped up by his irritated girlfriend.

Tranio had gone off to the harbour to buy fish, but now he rushes on the disastrous news traditional in this sort of plot – after a three years’ absence, during which they’ve eaten him out of house and home, the master has returned!!

From this point onwards the play turns into one sustained improvisation by the clever slave Tranio, designed to prevent the old master, Theoproprides, from discovering the truth that his debauched son has been eating and drinking away the family fortune.

Improvising in a mad hurry, Tranio tells Philolaches et al to go inside the house, lock the door and be silent.

This is so that, when Theoproprides arrives a few moments later, Tranio can tell him a cock and bull story that the house is haunted by a ghost, the ghost of a man cruelly murdered by the previous owner. He claims that eight months earlier Philolaches saw a vision of the ghost in a dream and so the entire family packed up and locked up and left. So it would be terrible bad luck for Theoproprides to even touch the doorknob.

While Tranio is developing this whopping fib, a shabby moneylender comes along demanding back the 3,000 drachmas he loaned Philolaches. This is the money the latter used to buy the freedom of  his courtesan girlfriend, Philematium. Including interest it now amounts to 4,400 drachmas, a very large sum.

Tranio desperately ad libs, telling Theoproprides that the money the moneylender is talking about was given to Philolaches to use it as a deposit on a house. Now his father approves of this because it indicates his son plans to become a man of property, going into business. So, he asks Tranio, where is this new house? Tranio falls back on the desperate expedient of saying it’s the house next door.

Having dug this hole, Tranio has to corner the owner of the next door house, Simo, as he emerges from his house planning to go for a nice stroll. He buttonholes him and talks him into letting Theoproprides have a tour of his house. Why? Well, he explains that the master is back and that he and the dissolute son are for the high jump but…er…er…the master is thinking of extending his house and would like to see how Simo’s done his house up? Would that be OK? Simo takes a while to be talked round, but then reluctantly agrees.

So Theoproprides is shown round Simo’s house under the impression that the house has been sold to his son, while Simo is under the impression he’s doing him a favour and showing him his improvements and extensions – all the while Tranio is on tenterhooks lest either of them give his scam away.

The tour goes off without too much of a hitch and Theoproprides is persuaded that his son has made a wise investment. So Tranio now offers to go to Theoproprides’s and fetch the young master (the one who is, in reality, hiding silently inside the locked-up house). So he exits.

So the ghost scam and the buying a house scam are working alright when a new complication arises. Along comes the slave of Philolaches’s very drunk friend, Callidamates, in fact two of them, a refined one and a coarse brutish one (echoing Theoproprides’s two slaves Tranio and Grumio).

These two slaves start banging on the door of Theoproprides’s house and when the latter, undirected and unconstrained by Tranio’s presence, asks them what the devil they’re doing, they swiftly give the entire game away. They say they’ve come to collect their young master, that he’s continually at this house where there have been wild parties every day for the past three years while the young master drinks his father’s wealth away, that Philolaches spent 3,000 drachmas on buying the freedom of a slave girl, that he’s never put down a deposit for the house next door, and that the leader of his revels is the disreputable slave Tranio.

Well, you can imagine how Theoproprides takes this series of hammer blows, physically recoiling from this devastating news!

At this moment Simo, the neighbour re-enters and Theoproprides asks whether it’s true that his son has put down a deposit on his house. First he’s heard of it, Simo replies, thus confirming that everything Tranio has said has been an outrageous pack of lies.

In the denouement Tranio reappears to tell the audience that he’s just slipped round the back of Theoproprides’s house, unlocked it and let the son, lover and the others get away. But when he tried to recruit them to his tricks they refused. So Tranio shares with the audience that’s he’s pretty hacked off by this disloyalty. After all the hard work he’s put in to save them! So he reckons the time has come to be straight with Theoproprides and throw himself on his master’s mercy.

In fact Tranio has returned to the stage just in time to overhear Theoproprides telling Simo he now knows the complete truth, and asking Simo to borrow some slaves and some whips which he’s going to use to chastise Tranio!

In a comic piece of business Tranio sidles to the front of the stage to where an altar has stood throughout the play. He is taking pre-emptive sanctuary from punishment for a slave who clung to any altar of the gods was inviolable.

Theoproprides spots him and asks him to come away from the altar but Tranio very nicely and politely refuses. At which point Theoproprides reveals that he knows everything (but, as the audience knows, Tranio already knows that Theoproprides knows) and threatens him with torture, crucifixion, fire and faggots!

At which point the play ends very simply when Philolaches’ friend Callidamates enters, now sobered up, and apologises to Theoproprides on behalf of his friend/Theoproprides’ son, and generously offers that he, Callidamates, will pay Theoproprides the 4,000 drachmas his son has spent. Please forgive him.

And when Theoproprides persists in his wish to gorily punish Tranio, Callidamates begs him to forgive him too. ‘Oh…alright,’ Theoproprides grudgingly agrees. And that’s the end, with a dinky little epilogue addressed to the audience.

Spectators, there our story ends.
Give us your hands, and be our friends.

Trickster strategy

Tranio has a neat speech about the strategy of the trickster slave in these kind of plays:

Well, if I’m going to be sold in my own shop [i.e. be let down by his colleagues in trickery] the best thing I can do is to do what most other people do when they find themselves in a dangerous and complicated situation – make everything a bit more complicated and never give things a chance to settle down!

Surely a lot of the pleasure of this kind of plot, from Plautus to the city comedies of Ben Jonson, is enjoying the sheer energy and inventiveness of the trickster servant. Very often they whip up such a fantasia of interlocking scams that there’s a kind of peak moment when they hug themselves with sheer glee at how clever they are – and the same happens here when Tranio declares:

TRANIO: Alexander the Great and Agathocles, so I’ve heard tell, were the two top champion wonder workers of the world. Why shouldn’t I be the third – aren’t I a famous and wonderful worker? (p.63)

By Hercules!

A small detail but I’m struck by the way that all the character swear oaths by Hercules, and how Tranio at one point calls himself the Hercules of tricksters. No other gods and no other legendary figures are referred to at all. Hercules dominates the field. It’s true of his other plays, too, and then, of course, Plautus wrote an entire play about Hercules. So what was it about Hercules?

When Tranio in a brief outburst begs Hercules for help, a footnote to the 1912 translation by Henry Thomas Riley reads: “Hercules having slain so many monsters, was naturally regarded as a Deity likely to give aid in extreme danger.”

To the remark, ‘He’s the Hercules of money-spenders’, Riley notes: “It was the custom with many to devote to Hercules the tenth part of their possessions. Consequently, the revenues belonging to the Temples of this Deity would be especially large.”

Fair enough, but it doesn’t explain the plethora of other invocations of the legendary demigod.

(Hercules is also the only deity invoked in Plutarch’s Life of Marius:

When [Jugurtha] had been thrust down naked into the dungeon pit, in utter bewilderment and with a grin on his lips he said: “Hercules! How cold this Roman bath is!” (Marius 12)

In Sallust’s Jugurthine War Hercules is said to have led an army in Spain (18) and also to have founded the Numidian city of Capsa (89). Hercules’ ubiquitous presence around the Mediterranean is a recurring them in Richard Miles’s history of Carthage.)

Crucifixion and torture, fire and faggots

Theoproprides to Tranio: ‘I’ll see you’re taken off to the cross; that’s all you deserve.’ (p.82)

Tranio is subjected to threats of a whole series of dire physical punishments, and from the play as a whole radiates a strong sense of the physical abuse and punishment slaves were vulnerable to. In Mary Beard’s book about ancient Rome she says that the ease with which they could be physically abused was the real defining aspect of slaves, hence the expression whipping boy. That’s true with a vengeance here.

In the early scene Philolaches eavesdrops on his mistress being lectured by her old serving woman, and every time the latter says something against his interests Philolaches soliloquises that he will:

  • make her starve and thirst and freeze to death
  • scratch her eyes out
  • choke her with a quinsy

I suppose this can be considered comic hyperbole, but it’s worth noting that the comic style of these Roman plays (and presumably their Greek originals) included extreme physical abuse.

This is even more true of Tranio who worries on every other page about the physical punishment he’s going to incur and when his scams are uncovered. In his speech announcing that he’s spotted Theoproprides at the Piraeus, he says the game’s up and he’s going to be punished. Presumably the following is spoken directly to the audience:

Anybody ready to be crucified in my place today? Where are all the punch-takers, chain-rattlers – or the chaps who are ready to rush the enemy’s trenches for threepence? Anybody used to having his hide perforated with a dozen spears at once? I’m offering a talent to anyone prepared to jump onto a cross, provided he has his legs and arms double-nailed first. (p.42)

Then, at the climax of the play, Theoproprides threatens Tranio with a whole array of punishments – to be whipped, crucified, hanged, beaten with a cudgel and burned alive, and Simo joins in:

Simo: ‘In that case, the cord will be stretched for you; thence to the place where iron fetters clink; after that, straight to the cross.’

Although played for laughs, this is quite a litany of hair-raising physical abuse and gives the ‘comedy’ a very dark or complicated flavour.

Credit

Page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of The Rope and Other Plays by Plautus, translated by E.F. Watling and published by Penguin in 1964.

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by Simon on March 11, 2022  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on March 11, 2022

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/03/11/mostellaria-the-ghost-story-plautus/