Terence

Terence [ Publius Terentius Afer] (c.190–159 BC), Roman dramatist, a freed slave, probably of African parentage. Six of his plays in the fabula palliata form are extant—the Andria (The Girl from Andros, 166 BC), the Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law, 165), the Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Punisher, 163), the Eunuchus, the Phormio (both 161), and the Adelphi (The Brothers, 160). Although they are all based on Greek comedies (four of them on plays by Menander), their originality is not at all comparable with that of Plautus. Where Plautus is topical, rough, farcical, and anti-realistic, Terence's plays are distinguished by their urbanity, elegance, and smooth construction. In all there are contrasts of character—in the Adelphi, for instance, between the strict father and the genial uncle and between the two brothers, one rash, one timid. In the Andria there is a situation not found in Greek comedy—a young man of good family in love with a young lady of his own station, an episode only possible because of the greater freedom of women in Rome than in Athens. The background of all the plays is neither Greek nor Roman but independent of time and place, and perhaps because of this Terence's works later had a universal appeal. In his own day, though he achieved some measure of success in the theatre, his audiences were not uncritical, and the Hecyra twice failed in production. Even Julius Caesar found Terence lacking in comic force, though many of his pithy sayings were quoted by contemporary writers. But his interest in humanity, summed up in the famous remark by a character in the Heauton Timorumenos: ‘I am a man; and all human affairs concern me’, gave his work an abiding appeal. In the schools of the Middle Ages his plays were not only read but acted; in the 10th century the Abbess Hroswitha even made adaptations of them for her nuns at Gandersheim. With the coming of the Renaissance they were translated into several languages; their influence spread to France, where it reached as far as Molière, and to England, where it can be traced in the first English comedy, Udall's Ralph Roister Doister (c.1553), through Lyly and Shakespeare to Steele, whose The Conscious Lovers (1727) is an adaptation of the Andria. Several of the manuscripts and early printed editions of Terence have illustrations which provide useful information about the staging of Renaissance plays, notably the Terence-stage.