The Double Plots of Terence

Author(s): Richard Levin

Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 62, No. 7 (Apr., 1967), pp. 301-305
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South
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THE DOUBLE PLOTS OF TERENCE
CERTAINLY
ONE OF THE MOST striking
features of Terence's plays is his use
of a double-plot structure which combines
the stories of two pairs of young lovers.
Virtually all the commentators, from
Donatus and Evanthius down to the pres-
ent day, have dealt with this aspect of his
dramaturgy,and virtually all of them have
found that it contributes materially to his
unquestioned artistic achievement. On the
nature of that contribution, also, there ap-
pears to be quite substantial agreement, for
while these discussions have been as various
as the points of view which have been
brought to bear upon the subject, the
specific advantages claimed for the Ter-
entian "duality-method"' generally focus
around two basic topics: the enrichment
of the comic complication that results from
the interaction of the two plots, and the
illuminating contrasts that this provides
between the parallel characters-the two
adulescentes, the two senes, and sometimes
others-of these plots. There is, however,
yet another dimension to this dual structure
which has been neglected in these studies,
even though it seems to have figured sig-
nificantly in Terence's conception of that
structure, and in the influence it was to
exert upon later drama.
This additional dimension becomes evi-
dent as soon as the comparisonis extended
beyond the individual characters in these
two romantic stories to the nature of the
two romances themselves. In the four
comedies built upon the double-plot struc-
ture (this does not include the Andria,
since Charinus' love for Philumena never
leads to any action that might constitute
1 As Gilbert Norwood terms it in The art of Terence
(Oxford 1923).
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a separate plot2), the parallel love affairs
have been clearly differentiated along the
same lines: in each play one pair of lovers
(Clinia and Antiphila in the Heauton
timorumenos, Chaerea and Pamphila in
the Eunuchus, Antipho and Phanium in
the Phormio, Aeschinus and Pamphila in
the Adelphoe) are eventually united in a
legal and socially accepted marriage, while
the other pair (Clitipho and Bacchis,
Phaedria and Thais, Phaedria and Pam-
phila, Ctesipho and Bacchis respectively)
only form an irregularsexual liaison. From
this, moreover, there follows another im-
portant difference in the nature of the
action appropriate to the two kinds of
romance: in the "marriage-plot"the central
problem is always the social status of the
young woman, which seems to disqualify
her as a wife, and the resolution therefore
typically turns upon a cognitio revealing
her true parentage; in the "liaison-plot,"
on the other hand, the problem is not the
status of the woman (which never changes),
but the ability of the young man to obtain
or to keep possession of her, and this is
resolved through some stratagem, usually
involving money, initiated by him or his
allies to that end. This does not mean,
of course, that all four plots in each
category are identical, for the pattern
admits of considerable variation in detail
from play to play, and there are even a
few which do not exactly fit it in all re-
spects; thus the marriage in the Adelphoe
2In fact, Charinus' plea that he undertake such an
action is explicitly rejected by Davus, the chief manipu-
lator of the play (And. 709-13). It has been suggested
that Terence's decision to include Charinus (who, ac-
cording to Donatus, was not in the Menandrian original)
represents his first, tentative approach to the dual struc-
ture he was to develop in the four later dramas con-
sidered here.
302
requires no cognitio, and the money to
maintain the liaison in the Eunuchus is
not acquired by the usual trickery. But,
as a general formula, it does indicate a
fundamentalcontrast between the combined
plots which is developed so consistently
in this group of plays that it surely must
have been the result of Terence's conscious
intention, either in his initial choice of
Greek models or in the alterations he made
in them.
A few modern critics have noted this
pattern, without attaching much signifi-
cance to it3; but more often it has simply
been ignored, especially by those who at-
tempt to reduce all the products of New
Comedy to a single archetypal scheme.
Moses Hadas, for example, asserts that in
this genre the following story is "repeated
with only minor changes from play to
play"*4:
a young man is in love with a girl owned by
a white slaver who is about to dispose of her
elsewhere; his cunning servant defrauds the
young man's father of the necessarysum; the
girl is discoveredto be of good birth (having
been kidnapped or exposed in infancy) and
hence an eligiblebride.
And Gilbert Norwood constructs a similar
"composite photograph" of the plots of
Plautus and Terence5:
A young Athenianis in love with a charming
but friendless girl who is the purchasedslave
of a leno . . . He wishes to purchaseher and
keep her as his mistress . . . Here intervenes
his slave, loyal to his young master but other-
wise conscienceless,who saves the situation by
an elaborateruse either to defraud the hero's
father of the needed sum or to induce the
slave-owner to part with the girl. When dis-
covery of this deceptionarrives,all is put right
by a sudden revelation that the heroine is
really of Athenianbirth (but kidnappedor lost
in babyhood) and can therefore marry the
hero.
And another such "conventional" plot,
3See Philip Harsh, A handbook of classical drama
(Stanford 1944), p.316, and George Duckworth, The
nature of Roman comedy (Princeton 1952), pp.157-8.
4Roman drama (Indianapolis 1965), p.ix. There is no
extant Greek or Roman comedy that actually fits this
description.
5Plautus and Terence (New York 1932), p.12.
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RICHARD LEVIN
couched in Freudian terms, is presented
by Northrop Frye." All formulations of
this type, it can be seen, conflate the two
distinct kinds of romantic attachment and
of dramatic action which Terence has
managed to separate by his dual structure,
and it is therefore not surprising to find
that scholarsoperatingfrom these reductive
schemes will fail to appreciate this aspect
of the structure, and may even criticize
it unjustly, as when Norwood, for instance,
complains of the Eunuchus that "the
dualism would have been perfect had
Thais been legally possible as a wife for
Phaedria."7 But that would have meant a
second marriage-plot for this play, with
a second cognitio, which is just what
Terence has always avoided.
One reason for avoiding such duplica-
tion seems obvious enough: Terence prob-
ably realized that two separate discoveries
of long-lost daughters would have been too
much for his audience to accept. The use
of this same coincidental resolution for
each plot would make them both much
less "probable." Moreover, it would make
them much less interesting, because of the
predictable and boring repetition. The
sense of fascinated excitement which Ter-
ence is able to engender depends in large
measure upon the variation of situation
and incident provided by his formula, since
it brings together two very different kinds
of comic action--one presided over by a
benevolent Fate, where the principal er-
rors and ironies result from an essential
ignorance, shared by all the characters,
which is innocent of human contrivance
and which is finally dispelled in a happy,
and equally uncontrived, revelation of the
truth; and the other directed by a shrewd
schemer who carefully arranges most of
the confusion and invites us to enjoy the
cleverness of his deceptions and the ridic-
ulous discomfituresof his victims. In terms,
then, of both credibility and variety, it
6 "The argument of comedy," English Institute essays
1948 (New York 1949), pp.58-9.
7Plautus and Terence, p.154.
THE DOUBLE PLOTS OF TERENCE
is easy to see the advantages of the special
formula adopted by Terence.
This may account for his formula on
the level of the contrasted actions combined
there, but we have still to consider the
effect of the contrast between the two
kinds of romance portrayed within these
actions. It is not a simple matter, since
it involves the emotional and moral color-
ing of those romances, and that is deter-
mined not by the real-life attitudes toward
marital and extramarital love to be found
in Terence's society in second-century
Rome, nor in the fourth-century Athens
of his models, but by a dramatic conven-
tion which has created an artificial exotic
world of its own kept at some distance
from the audience, the world of the pal-
liata.8 Some of the nuances of feeling
implied in this contrast, therefore, may
well be irrecoverable. Because they are
defined by the convention, Terence is able
to assume these affective values instead
of establishing them through his action,
which is concerned not so much with the
romantic affairs themselves as with the
conflicts precipitated by them between the
two young men and their fathers (or be-
tween the two fathers in the Adelphoe
and, to a lesser extent, in the Heauton).
There are very few scenes bringing the
young lovers together (indeed, often the
girl is never seen); their emotional relation-
ship has usually been formed before the
play opens and undergoes no real develop-
ment, being treated in terms of the con-
vention as a kind of donnde. And the
attempts to describe the passion of the
adulescens, either in his own words or
indirectly through others, are seldom very
helpful in distinguishing these two sorts of
love. In the liaison-plot as in the marriage-
plot this passion is called amor, of course,
and in both he typically reacts to the
threatened loss of his beloved with the
same despairingthoughts of death or exile,9
s Walter Chalmers discusses this question in "Plautus
and his audience," in Roman drama, ed. T. A. Dorey
and Donald Dudley (London 1965).
9 Cf. Heaut. 190, 398-400; Eun. 888; Phorm. 200-201,
484, 551-2; Ad. 275, 332.
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303
and to their prospective union (or re-
union) with the same rhapsodic delight.
Nevertheless, Terence seems to have
taken some pains to provide his audience
with an explicit statement of this crucial
distinction. Thus in the Heauton Clitipho
compares the haughtiness and avarice of
the meretrix he loves to the virtuous
modesty of the virgo loved by Clinia (223-
7), and in a later scene Bacchis enlarges
on this comparisonfrom the woman's point
of view (381-95); each young man in the
Phormio contrasts his plight with his
friend's, Phaedria arguing that Antipho is
more fortunate in having married a re-
spectable lady (162-72), and Antipho that
Phaedria is better off since his problem
was solved as soon as he paid the leno
(820-27); and in the Adelphoe a number
of persons point out the basic difference
between Aeschinus' attachment to Pam-
phila, whom he had promised to marry,
and his supposed infatuation with the
slave-girl he bought for Clitipho (326-34,
469-77, 724-5).10 But it is through the
action itself that the distinction emerges
most clearly. In the marriage-plotsof the
Heauton, Phormio, and Adelphoe the
young man has been living with a decent
girl, though apparently of humble or for-
eign birth, whom he already regards as his
wife," so that when the climactic discov-
ery occurs it does not alter his attitude
toward her, but simply allows their rela-
tionship to be regularized. The liaison-
plots really involve two different kinds of
love-object-in the Heauton and Eunuchus
she is a free woman, a professional courte-
san whose favors the youth has been en-
joying for some time, while in the Phormio
and Adelphoe she is a music-girl (citharis-
tria or psaltria) who is owned by a slave-
10 These
comparisons are not found in the Eunuchus,
the least typical play of this group, since Chaerea thinks
Pamphila is a slave; but see 624-6, 864-71, and 923-40,
which imply the contrast with Thais.
nSee Heaut. 99, 105; Ad. 332-4, 473; in the Phormio
they are legally married. The initial situation in the
Eunuchus, again, is different because of Pamphila's status,
but Chaerea is eager to wed her as soon as she becomes
eligible. And we are told at the outset that she is prob-
ably a citizen (110), so that we come to the action with
the same expectations as in the other marriage-plots.
304
dealer and is at first unattainable-yet the
liaisons themselves are akin in that they
always require money (to maintain the
courtesan or buy the girl) and are always
transitory, the thought of marriage never
crossing anyone's mind. There also seems
to be a calculated effort to debase these
affairs even further. In the first two
dramas the young man is made to com-
plain of his mistress' infidelity or cupidity,
the usual stigmata of the meretrix, and his
romantic posturings are severely qualified
during the final episode by the ease with
which he consents to share her in a manage
& trois, in the Heauton, or, in the Eu-
nuchus, to abandon her completely. The
other two denouements leave the youth in
undisputed possession of the slave-girl, but
the carnal basis of his affection is empha-
sized by his eagerness to rush her off to a
drunken bedroom "party,"12and the clos-
ing lines here, too, serve to belittle their
relationship, in the condescending permis-
sion he is given to take her home, as if
she were a new toy or pet puppy that he
would soon outgrow.
This would suggest that the contrast
between the two kinds of romance in these
plays has also been designed as a contrast
in emotional tone-that the marriage-plot
is meant to be more serious and more
elevated (while still remaining, of course,
within the bounds of comedy) than the
plot with which it is combined. And the
difference already noted between the two
types of comic action should contribute to
this same effect. The seriousness of the
liaison-plot is deflated because that plot is
resolved through the farcical trickery of
a contest of wits and butts, just as the
seriousness of the other plot is enhanced
by the resolving role of a benign Fortune
operating above (and often defeating) the
plans of the human intriguers. The most
crucial determinant of this difference in
tone can be found, however, in the issues
12Phorm. 829-37; Ad. 284-7, 521-31, 589 (cf. Heaut.
902-6). The climax of the marriage-plots is never ac-
companied by this sense of sexual urgency, since the
union has already been consummated.
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RICHARD LEVIN
upon which each of these resolutions is
made to turn. In the liaison-plot this issue
-the goal of the scheming and the means
of uniting the lovers-is typically money,
as is pointed out, for instance, in the
Phormio: hic simul argentum repperit,
cura sese expedivit (823). This necessarily
affects the audience's view of the action,
reducing it to a kind of confidence game,
and of the romance itself, which becomes a
commercial transaction; but, more im-
portant, it makes everything less serious
precisely because it is an external object,
loss or gain of which does not really change
the characters or their place in the world.
In the marriage-plot, on the other hand,
the basic issue is never money, but some-
one's identity.13 It is not a very profound
conception of identity, to be sure, since it
is defined in familial and social terms, but
it is still much more elevated than money
and much more internal, in that it does
alter people's lives radically and perma-
nently, the public acceptance of the mar-
riage at the close of these plots being in
fact the guarantee of this.
The kind of love depicted in each plot,
then, and the kind of action dramatized
there, seem to work together in establish-
ing the two distinct emotional effects.
Moreover, since the plots interact causally
and are juxtaposed through a sequence of
alternating episodes, these two effects will
tend to reinforce each other by way of
contrast, the presence of the more serious
marriage-plotmaking the liaison-plot seem
more farcical, and vice versa. Thus it
would seem that Terence's duality-method
develops a "foil" relationship, not only
18 The relative scale of value is clearly indicated in the
Phormio by the fact that Chremes is prepared to pay a
large sum to dissolve Antipho's marriage, so that he can
wed Chremes' daughter. In these plots money is never
used to buy the girl (even in the Eunuchus, although
Pamphila supposedly is a courtesan's slave, Chaerea's
access to her is not mercenary-see 926-9, and cf. Ad.
348-9), nor is it acquired by trickery from the senex;
rather, it is willingly given to the youth along with the
girl. This might suggest the descent of Terence's formula
from two opposing marriage institutions: the liaison-plot
based on the bride-price, where the man purchases his
wife, and the other on the dowry system used to buy
the groom.
THE DOUBLE PLOTS OF TERENCE
between parallel characters in the two
plots, but also between the plots them-
selves-or, more strictly, develops the
liaison-plot as a foil to the marriage-plot.
For the latter action appears to be the
more important in each of these dramas
(although in some the difference in mag-
nitude is not very great), so that there is
a foil arrangementhere in the most mean-
ingful sense of that term-a devaluated
background fashioned to set off and en-
hance the superior values, both esthetic
and moral, of a more significant center-
piece. This response is not so effectively
realized as it might have been, one must
admit, since the playwright seldom focuses
on the love affairs as such, yet it does
provide an artistic rationale for the specific
pattern he utilized in all his double plots.
(In fact, he may even be striving for this
in his two single-plot comedies, both es-
sentially of the "marriage" type, by sug-
gesting a contrast between his chaste
heroine and a courtesan-Chrysis, the
supposed sister of Glyceriumin the Andria,
and Bacchis, the supposed rival of Philu-
mena in the Hecyra.)
It is instructive to find a very similar
arrangement in some of the comedies of
the Elizabethan period, where a more or
less sentimentalized pair of lovers in the
main plot is juxtaposed to a much less
romantic and much more comic pair in a
subplot. The source of these subplots is
always traced back to certain episodes in
the so-called "native" tradition of the
Mystery cycle and Morality play, in which'
clownish characters, often servants, are
shown trying to mimic the deeds of their
"betters" in the major action.14 But there
is no valid reason for excluding Terence as
a possible source of this structure, es-
pecially since his influence upon other
aspects of comic theory and practice in the
Renaissance has been of such obvious im-
portance.5 Of course, one must allow for
14Some of Plautus' plays also include episodes of this
type where the slaves in effect parody their masters, as
can be seen, for example, in the titular roles of the
Stichus and the Truculentus.
15Marvin Herrick discusses the wide influence of
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305
the modification required by a different
set of dramatic and social conventions;
thus the main action in these comedies is
not resolved by a classical cognitio but,
usually, by some change in the characters'
feelings for each other, and the subplot
terminates in another wedding rather than
in concubinage. Yet, given these necessary
translations, the Terentian pattern can be
discerned in the treatment of the subplot
couple as foils for the more serious lovers
of the main action; and the traits they are
given for this purpose-earthiness, cyni-
cism, cunning, and the like-often could
have been derived from the intriguers of
Terence's liaison-plots. Shakespeare was
particularly fond of this arrangement, for
almost all his romantic comedies contain
"anti-romantic" subplots of this general
type (Don Armado and Jaquenetta in
Love's labor's lost, Bottom and Titania in
A Midsummer Night's dream, Touchstone
and Audrey in As you like it, Sir Toby
Belch and Maria in Twelfth Night, Bene-
dick and Beatrice in Much ado about
nothing), and many other examples could
be cited in the works of his contemporaries.
In fact, the fundamental scheme reappears
in the nearest approach to an indigenous
popular drama that our country has yet
produced, the musical comedy, which has
evolved a definite formula in terms of two
parallel courtships contrasted along Teren-
tian lines-a main action where a lyric
soprano ingenue finds true love, and a
subordinate action where a much more
jaded lady, in a husky contralto, settles
for considerably less. The line of trans-
mission from Rome to Broadway may be
very long and tenuous, but the continued
popularity of this same pair of love stories
testifies to the effectiveness of the idea
that Terence embodied in his double-plot
dramas.
RICHARD LEVIN
State University of New York
at Stony Brook
Terence and his commentators in Comic theory in the
sixteenth century (Urbana 1950).