To win the favor of such a crowd, which would groan if instead of the
expected comedy a tragedy should be announced,[52] what methods were
necessary? Slap-sticks, horse-play, broad slashing swashbuckling humor,
thick colors daubed on with lavish brush!

By Cicero's time the public had attained to such a degree of
sophistication that the slightest slip on the part of the wretched actor
was greeted by a storm of popular disapproval. "Histrio si paulum se movit
extra numerum, aut si versus pronuntiatus est syllaba una brevior aut
longior, exsibilatur, exploditur," says Cicero.[53] The actor dare not
even have a cold, for on the slightest manifestation of hoarseness, he was
hooted off, though favorites such as Roscius might be excused on the plea
of indisposition.[54] The Scholiast Cruquius to Hor. _Ser._ I. 10.37 ff.
notes: "Poemata ... in theatris exhibita imperitae multitudinis applausum
captare."

It is evident from all this that, while the Roman public had made
considerable advances in education, their demonstrative temperament had
not cooled. It seems eminently fair to deduce that the far ruder and less
cultivated audiences of Plautus' day were even more violent in their
manifestations of pleasure and displeasure, but that their criterion of
taste was solely the amount of amusement derived from the performance and
that they bothered themselves little about niceties of rhythm. To the
Roman, the scenic and histrionic were the vital features of a production.
Again we reiterate, only the bold brush could have pleased them.

That the plays of Plautus attained a permanent position in ihe theatrical
repertoire of Rome is of course well known; but he wrote primarily for his
own age, and in a difficult environment. Not only did he have to please a
highly volatile and inflammable public, but he must have been forced to