In the _Hecyra_, the second play of Terence, there is no preparation, and the delay in relieving the tension of the spectator is carried to extreme lengths. The old story of a maiden violated at the festival during a dark night provides the entanglement. In the end the guilty father of her child turns out to be the very man she has married. Even through the Latin text one can see that the early scenes of the original[12] presupposed an informed audience enjoying the delusions of characters working on mistaken suppositions. But Terence blotted out the information by deleting the prologue of the original. The semi-expository first act gives the immediate situation but reserves the key-fact for line 829 near the end of the play. If that fact—that the unknown violator was Pamphilus, the husband—had been revealed to the spectators at the beginning they might have enjoyed the dramatic irony of the scene (II, 1) in which Laches scolds his wife for imagined wrongs, and especially the incongruity of Pamphilus’ oath, by all that is sacred, that he is not to blame for the separation (line 476). Terence has done a very daring thing here in keeping the audience in doubt and in anxiety. He has assumed that the audience will patiently bear in mind these puzzling quarrels and asseverations and watch the mysteries accumulating without any key to the solution for several hundred lines. A modern, used to that kind of thing in detective stories, finds it less difficult to do, but our students usually have to read the _Hecyra_ with unusually alert attention, and it is certain that they would miss much of the delicate play if they were to see it hurriedly acted on the stage without previous preparation. In fact, Terence commits the sin of hinting at incorrect solutions. Pamphilus (at line 260) learns of the child and only betrays bewilderment, which is apt to mislead the spectator; at line 517 Pamphilus’ father also learns of the child but draws an incorrect conclusion, giving a new starting point for a possible erroneous guess; at line 577 his mother, half-informed, imagines that her son has deserted his wife for ugly reasons. Only at line 827 does the resolution of the intrigue take place. There is not one ancient play before the day of Terence, so far as we know, where an audience was left in such complete suspense before an accumulating mass of perplexities; and this was an audience, it will be remembered, accustomed to be taken into the confidence of the prologue. It is not surprising, therefore, that this play—one of the most human in the classical repertoire—failed twice, and that the spectators rushed away from it to see a boxing match. But Terence apparently was proud of what he had done and insisted that the play have its chance. Only after he had established his reputation by the success of the _Eunuchus_ was it at last played with success.