Game of the Latin Noun, new; may be played by all grades including beginners. Price, 50 cents. Verb Games, a series of five games, each 29c.; 1 and 2, on principal parts; 3 and 4, on verb forms; No. 5, on verb terminations. Game of Latin Authors. Price, $1.04. These games always please and profit; are highly recommended by teachers and pupils. Any or all sent postpaid on receipt of price. Stamps accepted. THE LATIN GAME CO., Appleton, Wis. THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY is published by The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, weekly, on Mondays from October I to May 31 inclusive, except in weeks in which there is a legal or School holiday, at Barnard College, Broadway and 120th St., New York City. All persons within the territory of the Association who are interested in the language, the literature, the life and the art of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, whether actually engaged in teaching the Classics or not, are eligible to membership in the Association. Application for membership may be made to the Secretary-Treasurer, Charles Knapp, Barnard College, New York. The annual dues (which cover also the subscription to THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY) are two dollars. The territory covered by the Association includes New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia. Outside the territory of the Association the subscription price of THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY is two dollars per year. If affidavit to bill for subscription is required, the fee must be paid by the subscriber. Subscribers in Canada or other foreign countries must send 30 cents extra for postage. 8 East 34th Street, NEW YORK SENTENTIAE I affords practice in the use of the dative (indirect object) and SENTENTIAE II affords practice in the use of the ablative of means and the ablative of personal agent. SENTENTIAE III affords practice in the use of the locative, accusative, and Each game consists of 58 cards and may be played Statements from teachers who have used the Games: "SENTENTIAE I, II and III were received by my beginning classes with great enthusiasm The Misses Shipley's School, Bryn Mawr, Pa. "Some few weeks ago the pupils of my Latin Research Club used the SENTENTIAE games with a great deal of enjoyment. I would say that the games are interesting and educational, and can be used to advantage in any Latin class or club as supplementary material". JOHN T. O'TOOLE, Principal of High School, Grantwood, N. J. Orders for the games should be sent to the author. Price 40 cents postpaid, 3 sets for $1.00 Two Books for Classical Students By CHARLES C. MIEROW The Essentials of Latin Syntax New Edition with Vocabulary. 186 pages. $1.20 ATHINAUM Presents in compact and graphic form the essential features of Latin syntax. The leading The Essentials of Greek Syntax 165 pages. $1.25. Part First consists of an outline of Greek syntax in tabular form with reference to four Greek Part Second comprises two groups of exercises for translation into Greek, the first for GINN AND COMPANY 70 Fifth Avenue New York, Ν. Υ. Supplementary Aids in Latin HURLBUT & BRADLEY'S NOTEBOOK FOR FIRST-YEAR LATIN BY STEPHEN A. HURLBUT, M.A., Latin Master in the Clark School, New York, A notebook presenting a carefully selected list of 650 primitive Latin words, truly representative of general Latin reading, for first year study. The words are printed on the left hand pages and the student enters on the opposite right hand pages the English meaning of each new word as he comes across it for the first time in the Vocabularies of his lesson book. INGLIS'S LATIN COMPOSITION EXERCISE BOOK By A. J. INGLIS, formerly of Horace Mann School, Teachers College, Columbia University. These blanks give the student a systematic training in writing Latin. The original exercises are to be written on the right hand pages while on the page opposite the student writes in full all the sentences in which mistakes are indicated by the teacher. AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO BOSTON ATLANTA OCT 20 1017 THE CLASSICALWEEKLY Entered as second-class matter November 18, 1907, at the Post Office, New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 1, 1879 VOL. XI NEW YORK, OCTOBER 22, 1917 THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF TERENCE'S PHORMIO con The three unities of dramatic composition, action, time, and place, are popularly supposed to be due to Aristotle. In reality, Aristotle discusses at siderable length the necessity of unity of action. But the observance of the principle of unity of time, which means that the duration of the action represented must not exceed a day, he merely mentions as an observed fact, without comment. About the unity of place he has nothing whatever to say. But, with few exceptions, the principle of unity of place was observed in the classical drama, if we may judge from the extant specimens. One reason for this practice undoubtedly was sheer necessity, in that, under the existing stage conditions', a change of stage-setting was difficult. There can be no change of scene without a change of setting, unless we are willing to do without setting altogether, and have merely a bare stage, which may represent anything. This the Greeks and the Romans, unlike the Elizabethans, were unwilling to put up with, and so they had to get along, usually, with a single setting and consequently without a change of scene2. But, in addition to these practical reasons, they might have advanced theoretical considerations for their observance of the unity of place. A drama implies spectators. While it is conceivable that actors should rehearse and act a play for their own amusement, still, in practice, an audience is required. When a performance is going on, the spectator is an essential part of the system. If we consider the actors as make-believe doers of deeds, may we not consider the spectators as make-believe observers of those deeds? Eavesdropping being bad form, the only place where we can be nonparticipating observers of a real event is in the streetand a street is invariably the stage-setting of a classical play. Interior scenes are unknown3. Furthermore, if in real life we have once lost sight of a set of persons in whose actions we have become There were merely the orchestra for chorus and actors and a background, either temporary or permanent, according as it was a temporary or a permanent theater. There was no curtain before 133 B. C. How the few plays, both Greek and Roman, that seem to have required a change of scene, were managed is an unsolved problem. A few apparently interior scenes were probably played on a sort of front yard or front porch, while corpses of those who had been killed inside were displayed, if necessary, by throwing wide the front door and showing the corpse laid out opposite (the regular place in real life), or, according to the traditional view, were wheeled out on the so-called eccyclema. No. 4 interested, it is very unlikely that we shall ever encounter them again in another place, much less likely even, that we shall meet them just as they are all again intent on the same business. To drop a curtain on the actors and afterwards to disclose them in a different place involves, therefore, a loss of realism. On the other hand, if we have become interested in the actions of persons before the doors of their own houses, there is nothing to hinder us from staying all day to watch their comings and goings. So the same considerations of plausibility which forbade a change of scene dictated what the actual setting should be, namely, in tragedy, where the characters are gods or kings, a street before a palace or a temple, in comedy, a street before several private houses, usually three. Exits and entrances were made through the doors of the houses (whether of gods, kings or private citizens), or through the wings to which the street at both ends led, the left (L), by convention, indicating the direction of the harbor or the rural districts, the right (R) the interior of the town. With this meager setting the dramatists had to do the best they could. The chief difficulty, of course, was to provide proper motives for holding all conversations in the street and within such a small portion of the street. In this paper an attempt is made to show with what skill Terence in his Phormio overcame this difficulty. For no one will deny that the license given to the modern dramatist of having as many sceneshifts as he wants and scenes of any kind whatsoever makes play-constructing much easier. Whether the license granted is justifiable or not is another question. In spite of the restrictions placed upon it, the play that we shall examine need fear no comparison with any modern play in naturalness and variety of situation. Below is given an outline of the play, scene for scene, with especial emphasis placed on the exits and the entrances and on the reasons why a character is at a particular place at a given time. Observe how naturally the characters are brought on the stage and dismissed. Here we notice a further difficulty that the rules of his art imposed upon the ancient dramatic poet. When a character returns, his return must not only be dramatically well-timed, but it must also be rationally This play is chosen because, on the one hand, it is one of the best known of ancient plays, while, on the other, it is one of a class in which the classical plays reached their highest technical development, the New Comedy. |