An old libertine may be a very fit subject for satire and ridicule, but in this play there is certainly too much latitude allowed to the debaucheries of youth. The whole moral of the drama is contained in three lines near the conclusion:—
“Neu quisquam posthac prohibeto adolescentem filium Quin amet, et scortum ducat; quod bono fiat modo: Si quis prohibuerit, plus perdet clam, quam si præhibuerit palam.”
Nothing can be more ridiculous than the delays and trifling of the persons in this piece, under circumstances which must naturally have excited their utmost impatience. Examples of this occur in the scene which occupies nearly the whole of the first act, between Charinus and his slave Acanthio, and the equally tedious dialogue in the fifth act between Eutychus and Charinus.
The _Mercator_ of Plautus is the origin of _La Stiava_, an Italian comedy by Cecchi; and in the second scene of the second act, there are two lines which have a remarkable resemblance to the conclusion of the celebrated speech of Jaques, “All the world’s a stage,” in _As you Like it_.
“Senex cum extemplo est jam nec sentit, nec sapit. Aiunt solere eum rursum repuerascere.”
_Mostellaria_,—which the English translator of Plautus has rendered the Apparition,—represents a young Athenian, naturally of a virtuous disposition, who, during the absence of his father on a trading voyage, is led into every sort of vice and extravagance, partly by his inordinate love for a courtezan, and partly by the evil counsels of one of his slaves, called Tranio. During an entertainment, which the youth is one day giving in his father’s mansion, he is suddenly alarmed by the accounts which Tranio brings, of the unexpected return of the old man, whom he had just seen landing near the harbour. At the same time, however, the slave undertakes to prevent his entering the house. In prosecution of this design he there locks up his young master and his guests, and, on the approach of the old gentleman, gravely informs him that the house was now shut up, in consequence of being haunted by the apparition of an unfortunate man, long since murdered in it by the person from whom it had been last purchased. Tranio has scarcely prevailed on the father to leave the door of the dwelling, when they unluckily meet a money-lender, who had come to crave payment of a large debt from the profligate son; but the ingenious slave persuades the father, that the money had been borrowed to pay for a house which was a great bargain, and which his son had bought in place of that which was haunted. A new dilemma, however, arises, from the old gentleman’s asking to see the house: Tranio artfully obtains leave from the owner, who being obliged to go to the Forum, nothing is said on this occasion with regard to the sale. He examines the house a second time along with the owner, but Tranio had previously begged him, as from motives of delicacy, to say nothing concerning his purchase; and the whole passes as a visit, to what is called a Show-house. The old man highly approves of the bargain; but at length the whole deception is discovered, by his accidentally meeting an attendant of one of his son’s companions, who is just going into the haunted house to conduct his master home from that scene of festivity. He has thus occasion to exercise all his patience and clemency in forgiveness of the son by whom he has been almost ruined, and of the slave by whom he had been so completely duped.