Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694)   By: Lawrence Echard (1670?-1730)

Lawrence Echard

PREFACES

To Terence's

COMEDIES

And Plautus's

COMEDIES

(1694)

Introduction by JOHN BARNARD

Publication Number 129 WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY University of California, Los Angeles 1968

GENERAL EDITORS

George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

ADVISORY EDITORS

Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan James L. Clifford, Columbia University Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago Louis A. Landa, Princeton University Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library James Sutherland, University College, London H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps no higher praise can be paid a translator than posterity's acceptance of his work. Laurence Echard's Terence's Comedies , first printed in 1694 in the dress and phraseology of Restoration comedy, has received this accolade through the mediation of no less a modern translator than Robert Graves. In 1963 Graves edited a translation of three of Terence's plays. His Foreword points to the extreme difficulty of translating Terence, and admits his own failure "It is regrettable that the very terseness of his Latin makes an accurate English rendering read drily and flatly; as I have found to my disappointment." Graves's answer was typically idiosyncratic. "A revival of Terence in English, must, I believe, be based on the translation made . . . . with fascinating vigour, by a young Cambridge student Laurence Echard . . . ."[1]

The Prefaces to Echard's Terence's Comedies: Made English . . . . (1694) and to his Plautus's Comedies, Amphitryon, Epidicus, and Rudens (1694) are of interest for several reasons. Both of them outline the intentions and rationale which lie behind the translations. They also throw light upon the sense of literary rivalry with French achievements which existed in some quarters in late seventeenth century England, make comments on the contemporary stage, and are valuable both as examples of seventeenth century attitudes to two Classical dramatists, and as statements of neoclassical dramatic theory. Finally, they are, to some extent, polemical pieces, aiming at the instruction of contemporary dramatists.