Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) — Reading Notes

Translating Wordplay and Allusions

Echard confronts the difficulty of rendering Terence’s wordplay and allusions. He states that puns, “tho’ never so prettily,” should sometimes not be imitated at all, because “the Fineness is more lost that way, than the other.” He attempted only those that were “Natural and tolerable in English.” For allusions, he acknowledges that many are “quite lost to us” and are “commonly lost in our Language.” To compensate, he appended notes at the end, some borrowed from “the French Lady” (likely Madame Dacier), to “shew our Author’s fine Stroaks” and “vindicate our Translation.” This pragmatic approach reveals a translator prioritizing clarity over literal fidelity, and relying on paratextual aids to preserve the original’s wit.

Adapting Character and Humor for Restoration Audiences

Echard explicitly adapts Terence’s characters and humor to Restoration sensibilities. He notes that Terence, “tho’ reckon’d very genteel in his Days,” sometimes exhibits “a sort of familiarity and bluntness” less agreeable to contemporary manners. He therefore “mollify’d” such passages, while still making servants “sawcy enough upon occasion.” More boldly, he admits to adding “somewhat more of Humour than the Original, to make it still more agreeable to our Age,” but insists he kept “so nigh our Author’s Sence and Design” that it cannot be “justly call’d a Fault.” This candid admission of embellishment highlights the tension between fidelity and audience appeal in Restoration translation practice.

Critiquing Editions and Rejecting Prologues

Echard engages critically with previous editions of Terence. He declares that “all the common Terences are most notoriously false” in act and scene divisions, with scenes “often wrong” and acts occasionally misassigned. He praises Madame Dacier for greater accuracy but notes she is “once mistaken in her Acts, and very often in her Scenes.” Echard follows her act divisions except in the Phormio, but omits scene numbers entirely, defining a scene simply by entrances and exits. He also omits the prologues, calling them “the Meanest, the fullest of Quibbles, and the least Intelligible” of Terence’s work, relating to “private Squabbles” impossible to understand now. This editorial decisiveness shows a translator willing to reshape the classical text for modern readers.

These prefaces reward readers interested in the history of translation and Restoration literary culture. Echard’s frankness about his methods—adding humor, omitting prologues, correcting scene divisions—offers a rare glimpse into the translator’s workshop. The excerpts do not reveal how his translations were received, but they document a thoughtful, sometimes audacious approach to making Roman comedy speak to a new age. Readers should note that the prefaces are as much about Echard’s own craft as about Terence and Plautus.

That rainy afternoon, hunched over Echard’s prefaces, I kept thinking about the gap between the page and the stage—how a translator’s angst over a joke’s timing feels almost like a lover’s. Later, idle, I stumbled onto Colombine — Story, Setting & Ideas, and found the same quiet ache: a character waiting, mid-gesture, for someone to notice her pause.