Asinaria: The One about the Asses

10 A Right Earful

207 10 A Right Earful Audience as Asinaria As well as eyes and spectacles, playwrites make audiences need ears and ear-trumpets,1 as much as slaves and children (64–5): Parents the world over, Libanus, will take their kids, if they’ll hear me out, and do some favouritism . . . . This includes everyone in town. (= “Keep your ear to the ground!: all of us are [in] this play.”)2 Hearing is reading out [loud]. It is [not] heeding, [dis]obedience, trying to attune, reaching for the intonation, following along a rhythm, indulgence; and it is overhearing, sneering, snooping, spying ready to snitch, and give the game away. To mention “hearing” is to command people—to suss, and lend ’em, out. This is how the play functions , and it is what the play, as such, is about. This re-wind chapter is devoted to listening when The One about the Donkeys tells us to. Let’s listen. Hard and easy.3 (1) Back at the start, the slave heard himself booked for master’s agent, not condemned to the mill. As they split, agent One found control passing over to himself. Pater calls twice through the distance: “You listening?” (audin, 109, 116).4 To ask and (absolutely vital, this, did they but know it) to tell whereabouts they’ll be. Master can’t (over)hear the asides: “I’ll be anywhere I please”; and, the future holds no fears (110–13: 114): Why, you’ll be no big deal for me, if I pull this off. Slave’s lobes would have burned if he’d stayed to hear master out, singing his praises (118–26. m- m- m- m-: 121; for 124: p. 158). He didn’t. 208 Commentary and Analysis (2) Client’s voluble volleys drew Madam out in the street. They trade earfuls . Her “Scram” calls his bluff, “Wait, wait, listen” (audi, 228–9). He is given terms for an assignation; they are non-negotiable; the door slams. (3) We begin the Courier scene “with” agent One. We are privy to his reactions as he overhears soliloquizing Two’s asthmatic crowing, hell for leather. He does love to hear himself talk. The late arrival needs a silencer fitted, as well as a break: his tongue is his “patron” (290–2), the top of the voice is needed for him (296), but questions must be calm before he asphyxiates himself (326).5 At last they meet, in pomp and fatuousness (cue messenger of tragedy: quod adfers aures expectant meae . . . , 331–2): LIB What’s that you’re fetching? Mine ears are a-g-o-g. LEO Focus your mind. You’ll know it, I’ll know it, fair do’s. = “Pray hush” in the theatre, no pin must drop in this otoscope for Rome. We must all bear with plot exegetics (ausculta, 350):6 LIB What next? LEO So listen up, and you’ll know. Courier goes to knock (i.e., kick) at the door.7 We’re waiting for him, and get in first, with “Basta! Don’t beat down my mate the door, with your kick like a mule!” (ohe, inquam, si quid audis, 384; uerberarier, 387; calcitronem, 391). We watch the matinee rehearsal for the scene, then overview the two agents’ attempt to method-act Courier off the stage, minus payload. For Courier’s benefit, Two-as-Three fakes splenetics at One, until he risks earache nauseating him out of town (446–8):8 LIB>ATR heus iam satis tu, audin quae loquitur? ATR>LIB audio et quiesco. MERC>LIB —tandem opinor. conticuit. nunc adeam optimum est priusquam incipit tinnire. ~ A Right Earful: Audience as Asinaria 209 LIB>STEW Hey, enough’s plenty. You hear what he’s saying? STEW>LIB I do hear. I’ll simmer down. MERC>LIB He’s hushed, now’s best to approach him. Before the tinnitus begins. We overhear asides from Courier to us; between agents and Courier, and agent to agent, in our hearing; assorted asides meant to be overheard and—not.9 This is eery drama, defamiliarized otology. Nothing works, everyone meets their asymmetric match: exeunt omnes. But just LISTEN: as sigmatism threatens to cut loose, and then does, the scene con-cludes (467–7; 493, 499, 502–3): . . . supplicassis. . . . tractare sese. . . . molestus ne sis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fortassis . . .| fortasse . . .| fortasse . . . percontatus esses . . . negassim. || (4) Juicy Lucy says she’s “a good girl: she (has to) hear mama out—and...