DE. I say, look out for trouble!

LI. (_Diplomatically._) For your wife, I mean, not for you.

DE. For that speech I bestow upon you freedom from punishment."[124]

The childish bandying of words in _Truc._ 858 ff. is egregiously tiresome
in the reading, but in action could have been made to produce a modicum of
amusement if presented in the broad burlesque spirit that we believe was
almost invariably employed. This gives us a clue to the next topic.



B. _Devices absurd and inexplicable unless interpreted in a broad farcical
spirit._


This includes peculiarities that have usually been commented on as
weaknesses or conventions, or else been given up as hopeless
incongruities, but which we hope to prove also yield their quota of
amusement if clownishly performed. The foremost of these is the famous


1. Running Slave or Parasite.

We all know him: rushing madly cross stage at top-speed (if we take the
literal word of the text for it), with girded loins, in search of somebody
right under his nose, the while unburdening himself of exhaustive periods
that, however great the breadth of the Roman stage, would carry him
several times across and back: as Curculio in 279 ff.: