Spectators, this play is founded on chaste manners. No wenching is there in this, and no intriguing, no exposure of a child, no cheating out of money; and no young man in love here make his mistress free without his father's knowledge. The Poets find but few Comedies [7] of this kind, where good men might become better. Now, if it pleases you, and if we have pleased you, and have not been tedious, do you give this sign _of it_: you who wish that chaste manners should have their reward, give _us_ your applause. [Footnote 1: _At Acheron_)--Ver. 1003. He here speaks of Acheron, not as one of the rivers of hell, but as the infernal regions themselves.] [Footnote 2: _Represented in paintings_)--Ver. 1003 Meursius thinks that the torments of the infernal regions were frequently represented in pictures, for the purpose of deterring men from evil actions, by keeping in view the certain consequences of their bad conduct.] [Footnote 3: _To Patrician children_)--Ver. 1007. This passage is confirmed by what Pliny the Younger tells us in his Second Epistle. He says, that on the death of the son of Regulus, his father, in his grief, caused his favourite ponies and dogs, with his nightingales, parrots, and jackdaws, to be consumed on the funeral pile. It would certainly have been a greater compliment to his son's memory had he preserved them, and treated them kindly; but probably he intended to despatch them as playthings for the child in the other world.] [Footnote 4: _A crow was given_)--Ver. 1009. "Upupa." He puns upon the twofold meaning of this word, which signified either "a mattock" or a bird called a "hoopoe," according to the context. To preserve the spirit of the pun, a somewhat different translation has been given.] [Footnote 5: _Of seeing the light_)--Ver. 1013. He says, "You can only resemble a parent in the fact that you have given me the opportunity of seeing the light of day, by taking me out of the dark stone-quarries."] [Footnote 6: _Be rightly doing so_)--Ver. 1033. Stalagmus chooses to take the word "dem" "may give," used by Hegio in its literal sense, and surlily replies, "I have nothing of my own by way of savings, 'peculium,' so I am the very person to whom you ought to give."] [Footnote 7: _Find but few Comedies_)--Ver. 1038. He here confesses that he does not pretend to frame the plots of his Plays himself, but that he goes to Greek sources for them; and forgetting that "beggars most not be choosers," he complains that so very few of the Greek Comedies are founded upon chaste manners. Indeed, this Play is justly deemed the most pure and innocent of all the Plays of Plautus; and the Company are quite justified in the commendations which, in their Epilogue, they bestow on it, as the author has carried out the premise which he made in the Prologue (with only four slight exceptions), of presenting them with an immaculate Play.] MOSTELLARIA OR, THE HAUNTED HOUSE. DRAMATIS PERSONAE.