Perde 5
[Textpart 4]
To one who has no savings of his own, you’ll be rightly doing soBe rightly doing so. Stalagmus chooses to take the word dem, may give, used by Hegio in its literal sense, and surlily replies, I have nothing of my own by way of savings, ‘peculium,’ so I am the very person to whom you ought to give..
COMPANY of PLAYERS
Spectators, this play is founded on chaste manners.
No wenching is there in this, and no intriguing, no exposure of a child, no cheating out of money; and no young man in love here make his mistress free without his father’s knowledge. The Poets find but few ComediesFind but few Comedies: He here confesses that he does not pretend to frame the plots of his Plays himself, but that he goes to Greek sources for them; and forgetting that beggars must not be choosers, he complains that so very few of the Greek Comedies are founded upon chaste manners. Indeed, this Play is justly deemed the most pure and innocent of all the Plays of Plautus; and the Company are quite justified in the commendations which, in their Epilogue, they bestow on it, as the author has carried out the promise which he made in the Prologue (with only four slight exceptions), of presenting them with an immaculate Play. of this kind, where good men might become better. Now, if it pleases you,
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and if we have pleased you, and have not been tedious, do you give this sign of it: you who wish that chaste manners should have their reward, give us your applause.
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