|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
AG. Then give me a kiss, so I'll believe it.
AD. I'll give you one as soon as I get back from the sacrifice. AG. Then go quickly.37
(4045) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The pragmatic complications in this scene demonstrate once again an understanding of linguistic phenomena such as speech-acts, felicity conditions, and pragmatic constraints on grammatical transformations. Milphio, in two formal attempts (365367, 370 and 392395) to make peace between his master and Adelphasium, uses a formula which includes amorous vocatives and a request that the beloved not be angry at the lover. The preferred response, when Adelphasium finally utters it (404) is "unmarked." And, comically, her forgiveness is motivated by concerns extrinsic to the amorous situation (namely, the desire to leave). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All the characters are aware of the game being played (or of the speech-event, or adjacency pair). Agorastocles asks Milphio to make peace for him, and Milphio knows how to go about this, even if he exceeds the limits of his mandate. When his master reprimands him and revises the instructions, Milphio humorously calls attention to the absurdity of the required transformations. Adelphasium knows how to reject and how to accept the offer of peace. And Anterastilis can tell when the game has come to an impasse and peace must be made so that they can get on with their business. All this means is that the playwright has created characters with the social and linguistic competence needed to carry on conversations, and that he and his characters have a metalinguistic understanding of the conventions that normally apply to Sprachspiele. In this they are no different from other human beings, except perhaps in the pervasive comic effect intended. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The negotiation of peace betweeen lovers lies at the heart of each of the three scenes of Plautus we have examined, and in each we have found a high degree of metalinguistic sophistication in the handling of these negotiations. In the Amphitruo, reconciliation plays a central role in the plot, and this is arguably true of the other two comedies as well, though I shall not press the point here.38 Suffice it to say that three of the twenty extant |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
37 "Go quickly" here implies "Come back soon (to kiss me)" so that "go" is equivalent to "come back'' and once again the poet (or his model in any event, the poetic tradition of Greek and Roman poetry) is playing games with speech-acts. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
38 I have already noted that in the Cistellaria as soon as peace is made between boy and girl, the girl's "mother" marches off to make peace between herself and the boy. In the Poenulus Agorastocles asks Milphio to forgive him at the beginning of the play (140144), and before our scene begins, when Adelphasium says she is going off to propitiate Venus, Agorastocles asks, "Oh, is she angry then" (333334). The comedy ends with a (non-amorous) request for forgiveness (14101413). In fact, in more than half of the extant plays of Plautus there is a request for forgiveness (and usually, though not always, a reconciliation of some kind) in the |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(footnote continued on next page) |
|
|
|
|
|