It has frequently been noticed[4] that the writers of the New Comedy, including Plautus, were far more generous than present-day dramatists in “preparing” their audiences for every turn in the plot and that they depended less for their effects upon the elements of “suspense” and “surprise.” It is generally assumed that the expository prologue was adopted by comedy from tragedy in order that the unlettered spectators who crowded the theater at the festivals should not have any difficulty in following the play. It has also been noted repeatedly that when the interest of the play did not rest in comic situations, buffoonery, ludicrous characters, and the like, but rather in an intricate plot that was solved at the end by a “recognition” or some other unforeseen event, it was necessary to introduce an omniscient “prologue” to explain the situation in an expository monologue. Superhumans like Heros, Agnoia, Elenchus, Tyche, Aer, Auxilium, Arcturus, Fides, and Lar were used, or an abstract “prologus” who could be conceived of as knowing not only the complete situation but also the outcome of the play. Only when the plot was so simple that it unfolded without risk of misconception, could the exposition be trusted to characters or expository dialogue within the play. Such observations may be accepted as correct so far as they go. However, they do not sufficiently explain the controlling purpose of over-explicit preparation, the consequences of it in dramatic effect, and a noticeable endeavor in Terence’s day to break loose from the limitations of the device. It is doubtful, for example, whether suspense and surprise were avoided merely because of certain intellectual limitations on the part of Menander’s spectators; indeed it is probable that explicit “preparation” was a convention that held the boards without serious objection till Terence experimented in a new method.