Actors in Early Roman Comedy

Transcription

1 Collin Moat Presentation on Roman Actors Latin 530 Professor Christenson 11/2/16 Actors in Early Roman Comedy I. Place in Society A.... were from the start non-citizens (whether free or slave) (Brown 2002: 225) 1. Nevertheless debatable whether in Plautus time the prejudices against actors had taken hold (Brown 2002: 225) 2. Actors were exempt from military service, a reputational blow in itself (Marshall 2006: 87) 3. Obviously some actors were free, otherwise they would not have a collegium (Marshall 2006: 87) 4. Later comes the infamia a) Qui in scaenam prodeierit infamis est ( he who walks onto a stage is disreputable ) Ulp. dig (Ulpian c CE) b) Other mentions in Suet. Aug and Suet. Tib c) Perhaps a formalization of previous prejudice II. Place in Business of Theater A. Mediators among poeta (poet), conductores (magistrates), and spectatores (audience) (Marshall 2006: 83-85) 1. Magistrates buy a script from poet 2. Magistrates hire troupe, who have a rapport with the audience 3. Troupe prepares play in short time 4. Troupe performs play for audience 5. Ultimately, financial impact falls on magistrates, but successes and failures affect the likelihood that poets and troupes receive future contracts III. Terminology and Roles A. grex (troupe): The social stratification in the audience is mirrored in the composition of the troupe (Marshall 2006: 88) 1. Managers of the troupes have to be concerned with size of troupe since payment is divided among members a) actor (impresario / actor-manager) (1) The manager of the troupe or lead actor (hence agere) (a) Ambivius Turpio (i) We saw him as the speaker of the Eunuchus prologue

2 (ii) His troupe produced all six of Terence s extant plays (Brown 2002: 232) (iii) Also produced for Caecilius (Ter. Hec ): In his quas primum Caecili didici novas / partim sum earum exactus, partim vix steti. ( In some of Caecilius plays, which I learned when they first came out, / I was driven off stage; others I barely stand my ground. ) (iv) Was not a slave during his time as an actor because he was in negotiations but might have been an ex-slave (Brown 2002: 233) (b) T. Publius Pellio (i) He was a leader of a troupe contemporary to Plautus and is mentioned in the production notes of the Stichus as the actor (ii) Non res, sed actor mihi cor odio sauciat. / etiam Epidicum, quam ego fabulam aeque ac me ipsum amo, / nullam aeque invitus specto, si agit Pellio ( But the head actor, not the matter, wounds my heart. / Even the Epidicus, which I love as much as myself, / I hate nothing more than to watch it, if Pellio is conducting it. ) Pl. Bac (iii) This reference to him can either be taken as falling out between Plautus and Pellio or a metatheatrical joke because Pellio is playing Chrysalus, the speaker of the line b) historiones (actors) (1) Term comes from Etruscan ister, term for Latin ludio (Brown 2002: 226) (2) On stage Roman actors are not held to the Greek Rule of Three Actors, which leveled the playing field in dramatic competition (Marshall 2006: 94-95) (a) Increases troupe size (b) Limits the need for actors to play multiple roles (3) Star actors? (a) Marshall shows that most Plautine plays have main characters who have more than 300 lines (2006: )

3 IV. (b) A majority of lines in a Plautus play are shared among a few characters (c) If an actor plays two roles, a main character (Pseudolus) and a secondary one (the Cook), he can dominate about a third of the speaking time in a play (d) Thus a few actors may compose the load-bearing core of a troupe (Marshall 2006: 120) c) tibicen (1) A double-flute player who accompanied the actors in the play and could have played interludes (although this is attested only once, in Pl. Ps. 573a) (2) Could have been part of the troupe and also had other subcontracts during the year (Marshall 2006: 20) (3) One famous example is in our text Eunuchus; Flaccus, slave of Claudius (a) He is owned by someone outside the troupe and may have been put into training by Claudius for Claudius profit (Brown 2002: 236) (4) Moore has pointed out the importance of the tibicen by looking at the unaccompanied iambic senarii and accompanied other meters and how they frame action, character entrance, and important information in the plays of Plautus and Terence (Moore 1998) Tricks of the Trade A. Gestures (Marshall 2006: ) 1. Scholars cannot use later cheironomic handbooks to extrapolate backwards onto Plautine or Terentian plays, so scholars cannot attribute a specific gesticular language to the text 2. Nevertheless actors can use their body positioning and pointing with the mask to draw the audience s focus to certain places 3. The way an actor carried himself also conveyed certain character types a) Leading with the chest is for the braggart soldier b) Leading with the belly is for the parasite c) Walking bent over is for the slave B. Singing and Voice (Marshall 2006: ; Brown 2002: 236) 1. Actors must have had strong speaking and singing voices to communicate to an audience in an open-air theater, especially while wearing masks 2. Actors may have used falsetto when portraying female characters

4 3. An actor s tone of voice imparts meaning to the text and changes the overall tone of the scene (e.g. did the slave boy in Pl. Ps cast the speech in a serious tone or was he disturbingly playful with it?) C. Improvisation (Marshall 2006: ) 1. Actors interpolations have probably made it into the texts, but finding them is difficult a) It is thought that the current text is more of a transcript than a script, which leaves scholars wondering what the script given to the troupe might have looked like (1) Actors might have caused what we see as doublets in the text which might not have been in the original script b) With this consideration, scholars can view Roman comedy texts as not only a product of the original author but also an heirloom that carries the fingerprints of the performers Bibliography Barsby, J.A "Actors and Act-Divisions: Some Questions of Adaptation in Roman Comedy." Antichthon 16: Beare, W The Roman Stage. 3rd edition. London. Bexley, E "Plautus and Terence in Performance," pp in Fontaine and Scafuro Brown, P. G. M "Actors and Actor-Managers at Rome in the Time of Plautus and Terence," pp in P. Easterling and E. Hall, eds., Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession (Cambridge). Fontaine, M. and A.C. Scafuro, eds The Oxford Handbook of Roman Comedy. Oxford. Franko, G.F "Festivals, Producers, Theatrical Spaces, and Records," pp in Fontaine and Scafuro Graf, F Gestures and Conventions: The Gestures of Roman Actors and Orators, pp in J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg eds., A Cultural History of Gesture from Antiquity to the Present Day (Oxford). Manuwald, G Roman Republican Theatre. Cambridge. Marshall, C. W The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy. Cambridge. Moore, T.J " Music and Structure in Roman Comedy." American Journal of Philology 119:

5 Appendix: Tools of the Trade A. ornamenta (costume) (Marshall 2006: 56-66) 1. On loan from a choragus a) Unclear whether choragus is part of the troupe or is hired separately by the aediles 2. Items that signify the character a) Marshall differentiates these from stage properties because of their attachment to specific characters b) Cane (scipio) held by the senex B. personae (masks) 1. According to Pollux (Onomasticon ), there were at least 44 templates for masks 2. As Marshall suggests, the masks themselves only provide part of the character on stage, and the rest is supplied by the actor s behavior (Marshall 2006: ). 3. They were either owned by the troupe or on loan from the choragus (Marshall 2006: 139). C. Stage Properties (Marshall 2006: 66-72) 1. Items that don t signify a character but might hold significance in plot a) Writing tablets in Pseudolus 20 b) Contract with Polymachaeroplagides image in Pseudolus Speculation on the qualities of these items a) Normally sized? b) Tiny? (1) Perhaps swords and threatening objects were small for comic effect c) Huge? (1) The writing tablets and contract huge not only for easier perceptibility (2) They are huge and unwieldy for comic effect