The Eunuch castrated: Bowdlerization in the text of the Westminster Latin Play

Author(s): PETER G. McC. BROWN

Source: International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 15, No. 1 (March, 2008), pp. 16-28
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25691205
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DOI

10.1007/sl2138-008-0032-z

The Eunuch castrated: Bowdlerization

in the text of the Westminster
Latin
Play*
PETER G. McC. BROWN

? Springer Science + Business Media

B.V. 2008

The tradition of annual performances of Latin comedies was particularly strong at

Westminster School, London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the
plays most commonly performed were Terence's Andria, Adelphi, Phormio, and Eu
nuchus. It became traditional to omit themost shocking scene in Eunuchus, and after
1854 thisplay was abandoned altogether, reappearing in 1907 in a cleaned-up version
based on one written by Cardinal Newman. From the early 1860s itbecame standard
to doctor the textof all theplays put on, eliminating references to such things as pros
titution, rape, and off-stage birth-pangs. This reflected debates over themorality of
Terence's plays thathad raged all over Europe for several centuries.
I refounded Westminster
Elizabeth
School in 1560, her
Queen
a Latin
were
statutes
to
laid
down
that
the
When
boys
perform
play every
if the Head Master and Under Master
failed to ensure that this
Christmas;
took place, they were to be fined ten shillings each. Flexibly interpreted, her
statute continued to be observed (with occasional
interruptions) until 1980.1
*

I am very grateful to Eddie Smith, theArchivist atWestminster School, forhis

help, and also toLesley Brown, Tom Earle, Nigel Griffin, JonathanKatz, Christo
pher Stray, and Amanda Wrigley. A listingof allWestminster Latin Plays can be
found in thedatabase on thewebsite of theArchive of Performances ofGreek and
Roman

Drama

ities Research

1.

(www.apgrd
Council.

.ox.ac.uk),

which

is funded

by

the Arts

and Human

For an account of the revival of thePlay after the Second World War see T.L. Zinn,
"Five Westminster Latin Plays," inD.R. Dudley and T.A. Dorey (eds.), Roman
Drama (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), pp. 193-226.A version of this
paper was originally written for a Festschrift forTheo Zinn (P.Brown, T. Harri
son, and S. Instone [eds.], OEfll AH PON: Essays for Theo Zinn [Leominster:
Gracewing, 2006], pp. 128-40), under whose direction I graduated fromplaying a

Peter G. McC Brown, Trinity College, Department of Classics, Broad Street,Oxford

OX1 3BH, UNITED KINGDOM
InternationalJournalof theClassical Tradition,Vol 15,No. 1,March 2008, pp. 16-28.
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17 InternationalJournalof theClassical Tradition /

March 2008
There was then an unf ortunate period during which I trust that theHead Mas
ter and Under Master paid their fines, but performances of Terence's Adelphi
in 1999 and Plautus's Rudens in 2003 give some grounds forhope that the tra
dition will now be revived on a regular basis. As it evolved in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, theWestminster Play grew into something of a rit
ual. The Head Master of the day wrote a Prologue in Latin discussing matters
of contemporary relevance (whether national or parochial), and an Old West
minster wrote an Epilogue, also in Latin, dealing in a more satirical way with
some
were
were
topical matter. There
always three performances, and they
attended by many of themost distinguished people in the country - politi
cians, clergymen, ambassadors,
royalty and reviewed in some detail in The
Times and other papers; after the final performance they printed the Prologue
and Epilogue
in full (in Latin). I am glad Iwas not in the audience on 30 No
vember 1831, since The Times the next day said, "among the audience we did
not observe a single person of distinction";2 but thatwas unusual. All the sur
in three
from 1704 to 1905 were published
viving Prologues and Epilogues
volumes of Lusus Alteri Westmonasterienses,3 building on Robert Prior's col
and their interest as historical documents
lection Lusus Westmonasterienses*
was
we have in Latin a con
emphasized by D.M. Low in 1916: "In thisway
customs
and
novelties, of themanners and events
temporary commentary of
which were engaging men in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries."5
In the course of these two centuries there evolved a cycle of four come
dies by Terence which came to be the plays regularly performed: Andria, Adel
phi, Phormio, and Eunuchus. There was not always a strict regularity in the
in the eighteenth century some other play
sequence, and very occasionally
was allowed to intrude, but these four
plays were the staple ingredients of
theWestminster Play from the early eighteenth century, until Eunuchus was re
Trinummus from 1860 onwards. However,
Eunuchus
placed by Plautus's
a comeback in 1907 under the title of Famulus ('The Footman')
in a
staged
(JohnHenry Car
cleaned-up version based on one that JohnHenry Newman
dinal Newman

from 1879) had written

in the 1860s forperformance

at theOr

prostitute inAdelphi in 1960 toplaying an old man inHeauton Timorumenosin 1962;

since that volume is available only from theWestminster School shop or Ama
zon.com, I am glad of thisopportunity to give thepaper wider circulation and to
thank Theo more publicly for introducingme to thesewonderful plays, which
have been my favourite reading ever since. There are earlier discussions of the
Play in J.Sargeaunt, Annals ofWestminster School (London: Methuen, 1898), L.E.

2.

3.

Tanner,

Westminster

served

nobody

School

(London:

Country

Life

Limited,

1934;

2nd

ed.

1951),

J.D.Carleton, Westminster (London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son Ltd., 1938), and
J.Field, The King's Nurseries: The Story ofWestminster School (London: James &
James, 1987).
See also The Times for 13December 1838: "Among the spectators present we ob
of more

importance

than

the

Attorney-General

and Mr.

Serjeant

Spankie."

Vols 1 and 2 ed. J.

Mure, H. Bull, and C.B. Scott (Oxford,London, and Cambridge:
J.H. and J.Parker,G.W. Ginger, andMacmillan & Co, 1863 and 1867); vol. 3 ed. R.J.
Mure, J.Sargeaunt, and J.Gow (Westminster:Ashburnham, 1906).

4.

Westminster:

5.

D.M. Low, "The Eighteenth Century inLatin Verse," Classical Review 30 (1916), 10
15 (p. 11).

A.

Campbell,

1730.

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18

Brown

and it
atory School, Edgbaston with the name Pincerna (The Cup-bearer'),6
held its own until again ousted in 1926, this time by Rudens.
The inclusion of Eunuchus in a cycle of plays regularly performed by
was last put on, in 1966
(long
schoolboys is perhaps rather surprising. When it
wrote as follows in The
after the old cycle had been abandoned),
Gordon
John
Sunday Express:
Westminster School, that high-class seminary forboys nestling in the
shadow ofWestminster Abbey, revived an old Latin play, "The Eu
nuch", as a summer frolic. From The Times critique I cull this story
of the plot. "An ardent young lover passes himself off as a eunuch in
order to enjoy freedom of access to the Athenian household where
to the
lives the girl he desires. He exploits his assumed harmlessness
is
mistress
absent.
lat
the
of
the
The
her
while
house
full, seducing
ter is also wooed
and won in a manner that is not over scrupulous."
The education of adolescent boys takes some odd forms these days.
I hope all themothers

approve.7

(In fact John Gordon missed a trick here, since it is quite clear thatwhat took
a seduction but a
place in the house was not what would nowadays be called
more
himself
rather
forcefully on the cor
rape.) St Augustine had expressed
at
effect
of
Eunuchus
school:
rupting
reading
themore confident committing of a
actually encourage
are
no
I
action;
disgraceful
bring
charge against the words, which
like exquisite and precious vessels, but against the wine of error,
which was given to us to drink from them by drunken teachers.8
The words

It is not hard to find similar criticisms voiced between the times ofAugustine
tomeet
revision was essentially designed
and John Gordon, and Newman's
them: in his version the ardent young lover passes himself off as a cup-bearer,
not a eunuch, and all he does with the girl he desires is run away in her com
pany; what ismore, the prostitute Thais becomes a young widow, and we are
to think of the two men competing
plot-summary
encouraged by Newman's
forher favours as rival suitors forher hand inmarriage. As The Times reported
in reviewing a production at the Oratory School,
the result
and even
is nothing
dience of

unlike that produced by Terence's work,

iswonderfully
in thewarmest scenes and most suggestive situations there
thatmight not be safely rendered in English before an au
school girls.9

In that case, you may

6.

7.
8.

9.

Pincerna,

ex Terentio,

reasonably
with

English

ask, why
notices

startwith Terence's

to assist

the representation.

play at all?
Cardinal

New

man's edition (London: Rivington, 1883, repr. 1887): performed at the Oratory
School, Edgbaston in 1866,1870,1879,1880, and 1883.
The Sunday Express, 12 June 1966.
Augustine, Confessions 1.16.26: per haec verba turpitudoista confidentiusperpetratur;
non accuso verba quasi vasa electa atque pretiosa, sed vinum erroris,quod in eis nobis
propinabaturab ebriisdoctoribus. (Translation by Henry Chadwick [Oxford:Oxford
University Press, 1991], p. 19, adapted.); cf.City ofGod 2.7.
The Times, 22 July 1880.
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19 InternationalJournalof theClassical Tradition /

March 2008
It is clear from several reviews that the appearance of the buffoonish sol
dier Thraso with his so-called 'ragged regiment' had long been seen as one of
the highlights of the play, and altogether it seems to have been enjoyed as a
lively play full ofmuch scope forhilarity; thiswas no doubt themain reason
for its selection. After a bit, I am sure that a certain obstinate conservatism and
clinging to tradition helped to keep the play in the cycle in spite of the eye
brows that it raised. But it is also clear that at some stage (well before the fu
ture Cardinal Newman
got towork on the text) itbecame the practice to omit
scene
most
the
in the play, where the ardent young lover (Chaerea)
shocking
describes his exploit to his friend Antipho in tones of great triumph and self
satisfaction. The earliest reference I have so far come across to the omission of
this scene is a terse footnote in The Times of 4 December
1834: "The part ofAn
was struck out of the
it that I have found
The
first
of
discussion
tipho
play."
is in The Times for 10 December
1839:
Itmay be necessary to apprise the classical reader that the fourth and
fifth scenes of the third act were omitted, and, of course, with them,
the part of Antipho, who was introduced by the poet solely to give
an opportunity for the
highly-coloured
description contained in the
fifth scene of that act of the success of Chaerea's
stratagem.
The omission ismentioned
again in subsequent years in a way that suggests
itwas a fairly recent development, but ithad almost certainly started some
time earlier, because Antipho does not appear as a character in the cast-lists for
this play in Lusus Alteri Westmonasterienses for any production from 1772 on
wards. In fact the only year forwhich he is included is 1746 (the firstyear for
which there is a cast-list at all for this play), and it looks as if the practice of
scene must have been introduced some time between 1746 and
omitting the
1772; there were five productions of Eunuchus between these dates, but no
cast-list survives for them.
Itwas not only Eunuchus whose
suitability was called into question in
some quarters. For instance, The Times of 8 December
1814, in reviewing
Vhormio, while allowing that
If theWestminster Scholars must perform plays, and if those must be
the plays of TERENCE,
they certainly could have selected no one
more blameless than the present,
went on to say that
his best scenes are in general deplorably indecent, and this stain is al
lowed to darken the vivacity and spirit of a wit eminently natural
and graceful. How far this evil, which eats to the root the entire ex
cellence of the ancient Drama, should weigh with theDirectors of a
[...] to exclude those polluting
great public Institute for Education,
we
from
the
feel not inclined to examine;
school
course,
productions
and (aftermore of the same)
it is difficult to imagine why no work could be
produced even in the
indolent literature of a public school, free at least from the rankness
of TERENCE.

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Brown

20

came to a head in 1847, when the danger to the continuation of the

Things
so great that a petition "signed by almost all the old Westminsters
seemed
Play
was
to the Dean ofWest
of Lansdowne
living"
presented by theMarquis
minster (as, in effect, Chairman
of the Board of Governors), who "required
but to know the truth, and immediately sanctioned the continuance of the
or may not have
Play."10 (Itmay
helped that the Prime Minister, Lord John
an
as
were the President of the India Board, the
was
Old
Russell,
Westminster,
Master General of theOrdnance,
theAttorney General, and the Solicitor Gen
- to
eral
say nothing of theArchbishop of York, who unfortunately died at the
a month before the
was
of
90
age
play itselfwas put on.)11 The play for 1847
was
scorn
review
17
and
the
Times
of
December
Adelphi,
uncompromisingly
ful of the critics:

In their classical course the students of every establishment will have

to be
to read many things much more indelicate than any passage
found in the plays acted atWestminster
School, excepting perhaps
the soliloquy in the Eunuchus, which at the last representation was
omitted. The cry of injury tomorality ismere twaddle, and itwould
be a lamentable event if an old and useful stimulant to the study of
one of the purest Latin authors were destroyed by such maudlin non
sense.

Itwould be nice to think that Prince Albert was taking sides in the matter
when he "graciously consented to honour the play with his presence"; an extra
so that he could
was put on during the holidays on 30 December
performance
attend.12

But the dark forces that drove Eunuchus underground

after its 1854 pro
duction also had an influence on the text of other plays, as becomes clear from
1862:
the Times review of Andria on 19 December
to call Desdemona
that modern delicacy which compels Othello
in
of
belief
her
instead
his
"false,"
infidelity by the em
indicating
a
coarse
not
has
been without its in
of
substantive,
very
ployment
fluence on theWestminster Play.
The review then discusses Eunuchus (saying "we believe the play is now abol
ished for ever from theWestminster repertory, as beyond the cleansing power
- within four
had risen to
of themost indefatigable Bowdler"
years Newman
that challenge), and it continues as follows:
But even in the admissible Andria several incisions have been made.
Well do we recollect how the line,
"Juno Lucina, fer opem; serva
out
shrieked
me, obsecro",13 forcibly
(itwas said by a small boy) was
"misfortune" [namely, the
the sensible manifestation of Glycerium's
fact that she is giving birth behind the scenes, without being mar
10.

Lusus

Alteri,

vol.

2, 97 n.

11. The Archbishop is commemorated at some length in the 1847 Prologue; the source
for the other names is Lusus Alteri, vol. 2, 99 n.
12. Lusus Alteri, vol. 2, 98 n. He attended again forEunuchus in 1851 and (accompa
nied by the Prince ofWales) forPhormio in 1858.
13. Line 473: "Juno,Goddess of childbirth,help me, save me, please!"
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21 InternationalJournalof theClassical Tradition /

March 2008
ried to the father of the child]. Now the line is rent away, and takes
two or three others in its train,whereby the doubt of Simo, whether
he is actually a grandfather, must be considerably increased. Gone,
case, uttered
too, is the broad, unconditional
report of Glycerium's
"Sive ista uxor, sive arnica, gravida a Pamphilo est/'14
by Davus,
us, at the last representation we
And, if our ears did not mislead
word
like
the
"duxit" ['married'], implying a
caught something
harmless clandestine marriage of a kind thatwould have been much
more
to
intelligible to the blacksmith at Gretna-green than Menander
or Terence. As for the defunct Chrysis, we almost forgetwhat was
the nature of her profession, so carefully do the speakers avoid the
word "meretrix" ['prostitute'] and every phrase pointing in the same
direction.
The omission of Glycerium's
off-stage cry ismentioned
time Andria was put on, on 19 December
1866:

again

the next

We recollect the day when the third lady, Glycerium, was allowed to
utter her little shriek at a certain momentous
crisis, but the people of
the present frown where their fathers were wont to smile, and the
lovely Andria, who, though invisible, gives the play its name, has
lost her somewhat shrill voice.
Some slightly enigmatic remarks in The Guardian
suggest that Adelphi, too, was now being truncated:

for 24 December

1867

But Sannio [the pimp] has been very much softened down by the cen
no longer glories in de
sorship, and though he receives blows he
Terentian
moral
Parts
of
the
them
[at the end of the play]
[...]
serving
are concealed by the same process which "rehabilitates" Sannio, de
prives Pamphila of her only speech [an off-stage cry in themiddle of
inAndria], and keeps out of view
giving birth, similar toGlycerium's
thematernal solicitude of Sostrata [this last a strange remark, since
Sostrata did still appear on stage].
new.
Objections to off-stage birth-pangs were not entirely
Already
a
on
note
in
Colman
had
said
his
translation
of
George
Adelphi:

in 1765

This is the second instance in our author of the outcries of a woman

in labour; a circumstance not easily to be reconciled tomodern no
tions of decency, though certainly considered as no indecorum in
those days. I shall not defend the practice; but cannot help observing,
that allowing such an incident, Terence in the present instant makes
a most
pathetick and oratorical use of it.15
(In his note on the passage fromAndria he seems to take for granted that such
- different rules
a cry
"might not be represented on our Stage"
clearly applied
to school productions.) And on 8 December
1825, in reviewing Andria, The
Times had said:
14. Line 216: "Whether she's his wife or his mistress, she's pregnant by Pamphilus."
15. G. Colman, The Comedies ofTerence, translated intofamiliar blank verse (London: T.
Becket and P.A. De Hondt, 1765).

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22

Brown

Ifwe might be allowed to suggest any change in the piece, we would

recommend the omission of the short passage connected with the ac
coucheur incident. Medea kills her children behind the scene, and the
to shudder at their dying
audience
is expected very appropriately
cries; but we can as easily dispense with the voice as the sight of Glyc
erium in the third act, and object to the conversion of the stage into
theward of a lying-in hospital.
I do not know if the suggestion had been taken up before 1862, but the end
ing of the Prologue for that year seems to suggest that the doctoring of the
text is new:
Siquid in Terentio
Placebat olim, siquid erat gratum, manet:
Nunc vel severos non timemus arbitros.
(Whatever was previously

found pleasing and charming in Terence remains;

we have no fear now even of strict
judges.)16

Further evidence that these plays were now being truncated and rewrit
to Charles Brodrick
ten is provided by copies of them which once belonged
Scott (Head Master 1855-83) and are now in the possession of the School: Adel
phi dates from 1863, Trinummus from 1869, Andria from 1871, and Phormio from
1878. Adelphi and Andria are each said to have been "adapted for the use of the
are said to be simply
Royal School atWestminster";17 Trinummus and Phormio
"for the use of the Royal School atWestminster."18 The first threewere printed
(Westmonasterii, juxta Scholam Regiam), Phormio at
by G.W. Ginger, London
London by James Martin, Printer, 18 Lisson Grove, N.W. Adelphi is themost
in the cast-list as mercator
remarkable of them all. The pimp is designated
rather than leno ('pimp'), and references to him as leno in the
('businessman')
text are removed by deletion or rewriting, as are words for 'prostitute' (149
and 747 meretrix, 965 scortum); the off-stage cry is omitted; at 467 vitiavit ('he
clam patre duxit ('he married her without his father's
raped her') becomes
text is changed elsewhere to reflect this notion; and (in
and
the
knowledge'),
addition to a number of other changes) new lines have been added at four
a background
is provided for the
points in the play (32 lines in total) inwhich
as an Athenian cit
to
be
identified
her
from
the
pimp, enabling
girl kidnapped
izen and married at the end of the play. (This is probably what The Guardian
referred to in 1867 when it said that "parts of the Terentian moral" were con
cealed at the end, and I assume that the lines were written by Scott himself.)
The changes noted by the reviewer of Andria in 1862 are all found in the 1871
edition, as are several others as well. There is less to change in Trinummus, but
references to prostitutes and sexual activity are removed at 250-55, 412, and
651. (On Phormio, see below.)

16. It is interesting to note that a woman in labour is listed among the roles that the
Guardians are not to be allowed to play at Plato, Republic 395e2.
17.

18.

'Ad usum

Scholae

Regiae

Westmonasteriensis

ad usum

Scholae

Tn usum

Regiae

Westmonasteriensis'

Scholae

Regiae

Westmonasteriensis.'

accommodata'

and

'Accommodata

respectively.

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March 2008
23 InternationalJournalof theClassical Tradition /
By the 1890s ithad become standard for all the plays in theWestminster
case
repertory to be cut by about a quarter of their length (or rathermore in the
of Trinummus, which is longer to startwith). For themost part, this had noth
ing to do with the elimination of improper passages but sprang simply from
were
a desire to keep the
long in
length of the evening within bounds: there
in
old
acts
renewed
which Old Westminsters
tervals between the
friendships
while the band of theGrenadier or Coldstream Guards played.19 But the texts
were also rewritten where necessary along the lines already indicated, as we
can see in the edition of each play "as it is performed at the Royal College of
St Peter,Westminster";201 have been able to consult the editions of Adelphi for
the 1890 performance, Phormio for 1891, Trinummus for 1893, and Andria for
1894. (There was no Play in 1892 in consequence
of the death of the Duke of
Clarence.) In Andria, for example, there is a subtle change in line 146 whereby
pro uxore habere ('to treat as if she were his wife') becomes uxor em habere ('to
have as his wife'), and a less subtle change at 756 to replace theword meretrix
the first change is found already in Scott's
by peregrina ('a foreign woman');
1871 edition, which rewrote lines 755-6 in such a way that no noun was
needed at all. Above
all, however, the 1890 edition of Adelphi adopts the
in
Scott's
1863 edition (or variants on them), though it does
found
changes
not include his extra lines. The 1928 edition of Adelphi shows that by then it
had become acceptable for theword leno to remain in the text, but rape was
still changed to secret marriage. Generations of boys must have left the school
rather well (perhaps even by
thinking they knew some Roman comedies
heart), when in factwhat they had got to know in the case of Adelphi was not
only a severely truncated text but a significantly doctored one.21
Similar changes (though with far fewer excisions) are found in the edition
of Adelphi published
"for the higher forms of public schools" by the Rev. A.
Sloman in 1887 (shortly after he had ceased to be Master of theQueen's Schol
ars). It is strange to think that theOxford University Press kept Sloman's edi
tion of this play in print until the 1970s; expurgated editions of such works as
the Satires ofHorace and Juvenal by Arthur Palmer (London: Macmillan,
1883)
and J.D. Duff ([Cambridge]: Cambridge University Press, 1898) respectively
were also
kept in print, but those editors did not rewrite the text in the same
Sir
Dover has drawn attention to Sloman's edition of Phormio
Kenneth
way.
(also published in 1887), inwhich the pimp Dorio is listed as mercator and the
text is changed to eliminate all references to him as a leno
(though it remains
the case that Phaedria requires money to buy from him the girl he has fallen
in love with) and also a few other things which Sloman clearly thought un
suitable for adolescent schoolchildren to read.22Dover mentions two passages
19.

For

the

long

intervals,

see M.L.

Gwyer,

"The Westminster

Play/'

inW.G.

Elliott

(ed.), Amateur Clubs & Actors (London: Edward Arnold, 1898), pp. 247-60 (p. 254);
are mentioned

the bands
20.

Westminster:

printed

from

time

to time

in reviews.

for the school.

thePlay was revived after the Second World War, Phormio in 1954 used the

21. When
pre-war

Westminster

text, but

the subsequent

thirteen

productions

from

1956

to

1980 used the full textof Plautus or Terence; the 2003 Rudens again used the pre

war

text.

22. K.J.Dover, "Expurgation ofGreek Literature," inWillem den Boer (ed.), Les etudes
classiques aux XIXe etXXe siecles: leurplace dans Vhistoiredes idees,Entretiens sur
TAntiquite Classique 26 (Vandoeuvres-Geneve: Fondation Hardt, 1980), pp. 55
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Brown

24

inwhich Sloman has rewritten the text; I have spotted a further eight, as well
as four lines that Sloman omits
altogether. Nine of the ten changes are de
even arnica
signed to eliminate thewords leno,meretrix, and
('girl friend'); in

thetenth,at 113 (quotedbyDover), Antipho is said tohave asked not thatthe

girl he has fallen in love with should be made available to him {ut sibi eiusfa
ciat copiam) but that he be allowed to visit her (ut earn sibi liceat visere). A review
of Phormio in The Guardian on 28 December
1887 confirms that Sloman's edi
as does the 1891 Westminster
tion reflected current Westminster
practice,23
text,which also changes some details towhich Sloman had not taken excep
tion: for instance, at 82 it replaces ardere coepit perdite ('he fell passionately
in
tomarry her'). These
love with her') with uxorem voluit ducere ('he wanted
are already to be found in Scott's 1878 edition. It is interesting that
changes
Chremes' adulterous affair on Lemnos is not glossed over in any way in any
of these editions, except that two of the four lines cut by Sloman (and also of
course
texts) are 1017-8: "About fifteen years ago he had
by theWestminster
sex with the girl's mother while drunk, and he never touched her after that."24
was
men committing adul
Evidently it
judged all right forboys to read about
at
not
time.
but
about
drunk
their
the
(Wemay note thatNewman
tery,
being
went rather further in adapting Phormio for theOratory School by turning the
pimp Dorio into a mercenary stepmother; he does not excise lines 1017-8, but
he rewrites them to say: "He was carried away fifteen years ago by blind love
to break his word,
of the lady he was lodging with and was then ashamed
once he had given it to her.")25
Sloman seems to have been unusual in treating the text in such a cavalier
fashion in a public edition intended for study rather than performance: other

89 (p. 69) (repr. inDover, The Greeks and theirLegacy = Id., Collected Papers 2: Prose
Literature,History, Society,Transmission, Influence [Oxford& New York: B. Black
well, 1988], pp. 270-91 [p. 278]). Dover's paper shows that the Bowdlerization of
Terence was in linewith thepractice of translators ofAristophanes and of Plato's
Symposium in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
23. "In deference,we suppose, to the increased Latinity of ladies, very particular care
had been taken to veil the offensive sense which lurks in a few passages of the
modest Terence. Some of these emendations made pudoris causawere decidedly in
others

genious,

were

Bentleian

in their boldness.

Here

is an

ingenious

V.viii.51-52: - 'Adeone hoc indignum tibi videtur, filius /Homo

habet
son

unam

uxorem,
as a young man

inal words

were,

tu senex

has

itwill

duas.'

it seem

so

['Does
disgraceful
one wife, while
have
you as an old man
unam amicam,
tu uxores
be remembered,

one

from

adolescens

si

to you
if your
two?'] The orig
duas

['one

girl

friend,while you have twowives']. Itwas a bold thing,but itpassed almost un

noticed, to substitute virginemat II.iii.66 fora person of a widely differentlyclass.
Her proprietor was also whitewashed for the occasion, firstvaguely as homo
['man'], and afterwards as sceleratus ['villain']. No doubt thiswas all as it should
be, but itmust make mincemeat of themotifoi Terence's play." (TheTimes on 16De
cember had quoted the passage from the fifthact in its original form as being
among thewell-known passages thathad received loud applause; the reviewer
had clearly not noticed the subtle change to the text.)
24.
vinolentusfere abhinc annos quindecimmulierculam
earncompressitunde haec natast; neque postilla umquam attigit.
25.
Caeco abreptumamore,hinc annos quindecim,hospitae suae,
Frangere exindepuduit, quam isti semeldederatfidem.

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March 2008
25 InternationalJournalof theClassical Tradition /
editions of these plays that I have consulted from this period print the text en
I also suspect that itwas factors internal toWestminster
tire and unchanged.
that led
(rather than a change in themoral climate of the country as a whole)
to the substitution of Trinummus for Eunuchus in 1860 and to the practice of
was starting
doctoring the text of other plays from 1862 onwards. The school
to recover from a period inwhich its fortunes had sunk extremely low,26new
schools were springing up all over the country, and Rugby was setting a con
with which even Westminster may
spicuous example of high-mindedness
is often
have felt some need to compete. The arrival of a new Head Master
the occasion for a tightening of moral screws, and Scott's Head Mastership
had begun in 1855, the year after the last performance of Eunuchus. Scott was
as an institution, and he wrote some excellent
clearly supportive of the Play
was
it
he
who felt that concessions needed to be made
but
Prologues;
perhaps
tomodern taste,whatever some reviewers may have thought about that. The
in 1861 may also have played
appointment of the Public Schools Commission
a

part.

But debate over themorality of Terence's plays was nothing new. Already in
the 1540s, before Queen Elizabeth's refoundation of the school, theHead Mas
terAlexander Nowell was defending them from attack in Prologues
that he
wrote for performances of Adelphi and Eunuchus (we do not know whether
the performances ever took place).27 Nowell argues that the plays are morally
a
we
improving because they show us examples of how
ought not to behave,
was
in
and
in
debate
fact traditional
this
somewhat dubious argument that
had already been used by Erasmus among others.28 There were weighty voices
on the other side, however, such as that of Ignatius Loyola, who at first sug
gested in 1551 that Plautus and Terence could be rewritten tomake them suit
able for study in Jesuit schools but increasingly came to feel that itwould be
simpler to banish them altogether, together with theworks of Erasmus, among
others.29 Itwas perhaps as a reflection of Ignatius's more tolerant, earlier ap
an expurgated edition of four plays of Plautus was published by
proach that
the JesuitUniversity at Coimbra in 1568, with a preface lamenting the fact that
itwould be much harder to purge Terence of the corrupting elements in his
plays.30 On the other hand, Chorus Poetarum Classicorum Duplex Sacrorum et
26. See Sargeaunt (above, n. 1), pp. 229-43 (ch.XII: 'The School's Decline'); he dates the
firstrays of hope for improvement to 1845. On pp. 239-40 he discusses George
Colman theyounger's demand for the abolition of thePlay; he is imprecise about
the date, but itwas probably while Colman held the post of Examiner of Plays,
from 1824 to 1836.
27. See B.R. Smith,Ancient Scripts& Modern Experience on theEnglish Stage 1500-1700
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 141-7.
28.

29.

See D. McPherson,

"Roman

Comedy

in Renaissance

tion," SixteenthCentury Journal12 (1981), 19-30.

See N.

Griffin,

"Plautus

Castigatus:

Rome,

Portugal,

Education:
and

The Moral

Jesuit Drama

Ques

Texts,"

in

M. Chiabo and F.Doglio (eds.), Igesuiti e iprimordidel teatrobarocco inEuropa: con

vegno di studi,Roma 26-29 ottobre1994,Anagni 30 ottobre1994 (Rome: Centro Studi
sul TeatroMedioevale e Rinascimentale, 1995), pp. 257-86 (pp. 272-3).
30. See Griffin (above, n. 29) pp. 282-6. The plays were Aulularia, Captivi, Stichus, and
Trinummus.

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Brown

26

an anonymous
Profanorum,
expurgated edition of all classical Latin verse pub
in 1616, applies the knife farmore
lished at Lyons by the publisher Muguet
to
to
in 1686 the Jesuit Joseph de Jou
Terence
and
than
Plautus;31
sparingly
vency (Juvencius) published Publii Terentii Comoediae Expurgatae, which was
a further 26 times between then and 1824.32
printed
Among other things, Ju
in converting the rape inAdelphi into a secret
vencius anticipated Westminster
account of his exploit from
marriage; he did not entirely eliminate Chaerea's
as
so
cut
text
rewrote
to
but
and
make
he
the
that exploit simply the
Eunuchus,
act of dressing up as a eunuch in order to get into Thais's house, make eyes at
the girl he has resolved tomarry, and then run away. In this context itmay also
be worth mentioning Cornelius
Terentius Christianus, first pub
Schonaeus'
in 1592, a collection of biblical stories in the style of Terence,
lished inCologne
'Terentian' comedies begun by
and thus in the tradition of Christianizing
in the tenth century and continued by authors
of Gandersheim
Hrotswitha
and Georgius Macropedius
earlier in the six
such as Gulielmus Gnaphaeus
teenth century; Schonaeus' work was reprinted 25 times in the following 100
years.33

the previous paragraph has shown, the debate was not confined to
England. Itmay be studied inmore detail inworks by Otto Francke, Otto Paul
Dittrich, and Harold Walter Lawton, and there is some relevant material also
in a paper by Karl Otto Conrady and inVolker Riedel's book.34 Whatever
ob
was
some
Terence
from
been
there
have
may
jections
quarters,
performed, im
schools from the sixteenth century onwards. I
itated, and read in European
have so far come across only two editions of his comedies, other than those al
that proclaim themselves to be expurgated; I have been un
ready mentioned,
able to consult either of them. One is the 1605 Antwerp edition by Jerome
Verdussen
"The six comedies of Terence freshly cleansed of
(Verdussius),
faults and of all obscenity, for the use of schools,"35 the other the 1864 Prato
edition by Enrico Bindi, "The comedies of Terence, and some of Plautus, ex
As

31. See McPherson (above, n. 28) pp. 27-30.

32. Publii TerentiiComoediae Expurgatae, ed. Josephus Juvencius, S.J. (Rouen: R. Lalle
mant,

1686).

The

successive

printings

are

listed

in G. Cupaiuolo,

Bibliografia

Teren

(1470-1983), Studi e testi dell'antichita 16 (Naples: Societa Editrice

Napoletana, 1984), though he does not give the titleof the edition.
33. See Cupaiuolo (above, n. 32) p. 266, no. 26951.
34. O. Francke, Terenz und die lateinischeSchulcomoedie inDeutschland (Weimar: Her
mann Bohlau, 1877); O.P. Dittrich, Plautus und Terenz inPadagogik und Schulwesen
ziana

der deutschen

Humanisten

(Diss.

Leipzig,

1915); H.W.

Lawton,

Terence

en France

au

XVIe Steele (Paris: Jouve, 1926) (repr. in two volumes, vol. 1: Editions etTraductions
[Geneva: Slatkine, 1970]; vol. 2: Imitationet Influence [ibid., 1972]); K.O. Conrady,
"Zu den deutschen Plautusubertragungen," Euphorion 48 (1954), 373-96; V. Riedel,
Antikerezeptioninder deutschenLiteraturvomRenaissance-Humanismus bis zur Gegen
wart (Stuttgart-Weimar: J.B.Metzler, 2000), pp. 58-61. Among other things,Law
ton,vol. 1,pp. 321,485 refers to the reading of Eunuchus at theCollege ofCardinal
Lemoine in 1586.
35. Publii Terentii comoediae sex a mendis denuo omnique obscoenitate in scholarum usum
perpurgatae,listed as no. 0102733 in theNational Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints
vol. 587 (copy atHarvard University).
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27 InternationalJournalof theClassical Tradition /

March 2008
use of schools/'36 Doubtless
therewere others,
purgated and annotated for the
but the practice was not common. Plautus and Terence are not included in
Byron's list of corrupting classical authors in stanzas 41-5 of the first canto of
Don Juan,where he refers to an edition ofMartial inwhich all the obscene epi
them easier for school
grams were relegated to an appendix, thus making
boys to find.
In Germany, it ismost relevant tomention the productions of Terence and
Plautus in German translation put on by Goethe atWeimar when he was in
charge of the theatre there: Adelphi in 1801, Eunuchus and Andria in 1803, Heau
tonTimorumenos in 1804, Captivi in 1806,Mostellaria in 1807.37 The productions
were played inmasks, and some care was taken to try to reconstruct the orig
inal performance conditions, but the plays were adapted to conform to current
morality inways that (once again) sometimes anticipate quite strikingly what
was done atWestminster later in the century, for instance in the removal of ref
erences to prostitution and pimping (which Juvencius had also eliminated).
Among themost radical, as one might expect, were the changes to Eunuchus,
which had its title changed to Die Mohrin ('The Moorish GirT). In Terence's
play the prostitute Thais is given two presents by her lover, an Ethiopian girl
and a eunuch, and Chaerea takes the place of the eunuch; in theWeimar adap
tation she is given just one present, aMoorish girl, so Chaerea has to take the
place of that girl. Instead of raping his beloved, he begs, swears, threatens,
and confesses all, and it is left slightly inexplicit how far he has succeeded in
going with her. The audience still found it all pretty shocking, but theywould
have been even more shocked by the original play; and the revisions were no
table enough for one reviewer to denounce the play (his scorn getting the bet
ter of his Latin) as "Eunuchus iterummutilitatus"
('The eunuch mutilitated for
a second time').38
Bowdlerization was thus well established in other countries (even if rare
in published editions of Terence) before the first edition of The Family Shake
in London
in 1807; what ismore, itwas already well estab
speare appeared
lished in theUnited Kingdom
too, as has been shown by Noel Perrin.39 Perrin
in fact labels JohnWesley on p.35 as "the first serious bowdlerizer of
English
literature," on the strength of his Collection ofMoral and Sacred Poems, From the
Most Celebrated English Authors, published
in 1744. So it is interesting to note
thatWesley wrote in his Journal on 14 December
1768:
I saw theWestminster scholars act the
an en
"Adelphi" of Terence,
tertainment not unworthy of a Christian! O how do these Heathens
shame us! Their very comedies
contain both excellent sense, the

36.

Le commedie

di Terenzio

e alcune

di Plauto

espurgate

e annotate

per uso delle scuole,

listed

as no. 0102984 in theNational Union

Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints vol. 587 (copy at
theUniversity of Chicago).
37. The details in thisparagraph are derived fromB.R. Kes, Die Rezeption derKombdien
des Plautus und Terenz im 19. Jahrhundert(Amsterdam: B.R. Griiner, 1988).
38. J.D. Falk, inZeitungfur die eleganteWelt, 5March 1803.
39. N. Perrin, Dr Bowdler's Legacy:A History ofExpurgated Books inEngland andAmer
ica (enlarged edition, Boston: D.R. Godine
[Nonpareil Books], 1992).
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Brown

28

liveliest pictures ofmen and manners, and so fine strokes of genuine

as are seldom found in the
morality
writings of Christians.40
I see no reason to suppose that theywere performing an adapted text at that
time, and this only goes to show that different people have different tastes in
different ages. We may be inclined tomock the assiduity with which thewords
cen
'pimp' and 'prostitute' were avoided in some quarters in the nineteenth
now
correctness
but
of
much
the
tury,
occupies
ground previously
political
occupied by moral correctness, as iswell shown by Perrin in the final chapter
on 'The Current Scene' that he added to the second edition of his book. It once
to replace the words for 'prostitute' and 'eunuch' with
seemed appropriate
woman'
and 'Moorish girl'; before long, we shall probably find our
'foreign
and 'Moorish
selves looking for expressions to substitute for 'foreign woman'
our texts.
ever
occur
if
in
girl'
they

40. Wesley's Journal (ed. 1827, vol. iii,p. 340; Parker's abridged ed., 1902, p. 343), as
quoted in The Elizabethan (theWestminster School magazine), October 1903, p.
296.

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