Still again, the dramatists of New Comedy were fond of representing a character in the act of passing through a doorway and shouting back parting injunctions to those within—an artifice which is sufficiently transparent and is justly ridiculed in Terence’s _Andrian Girl_. A nurse has been summoned in a confinement case and issues her final instructions while leaving the house. Simo, who thinks no child has been born and that it is all a trick to deceive him, turns fiercely upon the scheming slave at his side: “Who that knows you would not believe this to be the product of your brain? She did not tell what must be done for the mother in her presence; but after taking her departure she screams from the street to the attendants within. O Davus, do you scorn me so? Pray do I seem so suitable a victim for you to beguile with such transparent stratagems? You ought to work out the details of your plots more exactly, so that I might at least _seem_ to be feared in case I learned the truth” (vss. 489 ff.). Be it noted, however, that such a stickler for realism as Ibsen occasionally made use of this same device (cf. _Pillars of Society_, Acts II and III). A close parallel occurs in Aristophanes’ _Acharnians_, vss. 1003 ff. As a final illustration of the artificiality of the exterior scene I may refer to the manner in which characters are brusquely called out of their homes to meet the demands of the dramatic situation. Thus in Euripides’ _Iphigenia at Aulis_ a messenger enters and unceremoniously shouts to his queen within doors: Daughter of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra, come Forth from the tent, that thou mayst hear my tale. [Vss. 1532 f.; Way’s translation], and in Euripides’ _Children of Heracles_, Iolaus calls: Alcmene, mother of a hero-son, Come forth, give ear to these most welcome words. [Vss. 642 f.; Way’s translation] To judge by such a dramatic expedient, the front walls of ancient houses must have been pretty thin![317] It is interesting to contrast the uproar which is required in Shakespeare’s _Othello_ (Act I, scene 1) before Brabantio can be brought to his window. Perhaps the most amusing instance of this convention occurs in Plautus’ _Braggart Captain_. In that play a slave had to be deluded into believing that two women of identical appearance lived in adjoining houses. Accordingly he is first sent into one house and then into the other, while directions are shouted to the one woman in question to move back and forth by means of a secret passage so as always to meet him (vss. 523 ff.). This of course presupposes that the walls will be thin enough for the woman to hear through but too thick for the slave to do so! The publicity thus inevitably attending conversations of the most private nature was rendered still more incongruous by the constant presence of the chorus; but this topic has already been treated on pages 154-57, above.