Terence.--Menander. Horace did so highly esteem Terence's comedies,
as he ascribes the art in comedy to him alone among the Latins, and
joins him with Menander.
Now, let us see what may be said for either, to defend Horace's
judgment to posterity and not wholly to condemn Plautus.
The parts of a comedy and tragedy.--The parts of a comedy are the
same with a tragedy, and the end is partly the same, for they both
delight and teach; the comics are called [Greek text], of the Greeks
no less than the tragics.
Aristotle.--Plato.--Homer.--Nor is the moving of laughter always the
end of comedy; that is rather a fowling for the people's delight, or
their fooling. For, as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of
laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude that depraves
some part of a man's nature without a disease. As a wry face
without pain moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown
dressed in a lady's habit and using her actions; we dislike and
scorn such representations which made the ancient philosophers ever
think laughter unfitting in a wise man. And this induced Plato to
esteem of Homer as a sacrilegious person, because he presented the
gods sometimes laughing.
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