Note 16 — Chapter III · GREEK COMEDY ON THE ROMAN STAGE

Cf. C. M. Kurrelmeyer, Economy of Actors in Plautus. The well-known Horatian rule was a later reversion to a Greek rule. Choral singers were apparently imported from Greece in large numbers in the days of Accius; there was a Societas cantorum Graecorum at Rome then: see Raccolta in onore G. Lombroso, 287. In England the early companies that played the interludes seldom numbered over four, and yet they had at times to take care of sixteen or more rôles. Doubling was less drastic in Shakespeare’s theater but it sufficed to allow the dramatist the privilege of producing diversified effects by using many rôles for only one scene or act. In Hamlet alone there are some ten rôles of this type. Plautus and Terence do not hesitate to dismiss a character after the first scene or indeed to introduce one in the last.