Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

THE YOUNGER SENECA
the stage the actors likewise borrow the emotional tones of their pronunciation
from the masks, so that in tragedy Aerope is mournful, and Medea savage. ..'«
Second: to decide on the category to which the Senecan tragedies may have
belonged we have one recourse only, and that is to analysis of their texts. Third:
such analysis has so far produced no passage that is physically impossible to
stage. Zwierlein, in his valuable discussion of the texts from this point of
view, 2 has indeed shown that many passages defy the conventions of the fifthcentury
B.C. Attic stage; but has taken no account of the possibility, or probability,
that the Neronian live theatre may have been as different from that of
classical Greece as the Golden House was from the Parthenon. There remains
nothing in the Senecan tragedies that could not have been staged with, for
example, the resources of English Restoration drama. The atrocious Oedipus
of Dryden and Lee (1679) is, by Zwierlein's standards, far less stageable than
any scene in Seneca (the stage-direction for Oedipus' death, for example,
reads: 'Thunder. He flings himself from the window. The Thebans gather
around his body'). Yet it was composed for the stage; all that was necessary
was some miming, and some machinery — neither of them by any means unknown
to Neronian public entertainment. It may finally be noted that the only
actable English poetic translation of any of Seneca's plays, Ted Hughes's
Oedipus (1969) has responded well to the production-methods and theatrical
expectations of the later twentieth century.
In view of the extreme deficiency of relevant data, the question of the manner
of performance of the tragedies should probably, in method, be left open. The
following discussion of their literary character will aim rather at those aspects
which would be equally significant whether Seneca intended performance on
the stage, or in the salon, or in the mind's eye. The works primarily referred
to will be the seven tragedies which are both complete and generally acknowledged
as authentic. Much of what is said will apply also to the Phoenissae,
which is incomplete (it lacks choruses, and is apparently an ill-coordinated
series of draft scenes for a play covering the events in the Theban saga that
followed the deposition of Oedipus), 3 and to the remaining mythological play
in the corpus, the probably spurious Hercules Oetaeus. A Senecan tragedy takes
for its subject a Greek mythical episode, and in presenting that episode follows,
in outline, a play by one of the great Attic tragedians. As it happens, almost all
the Greek prototypes have survived for comparison 4 — perhaps an indication
1
For live theatre in Seneca's time see Epist. 80.7—8 and De ira 2.i7.i.The evidence for'recitation
drama* is assembled by Zwierlein (1966) 127—66.
2
Zwierlein (1966).
3
Such is the school of thought to which the present writer inclines; it presents far less difficulty
than the alternative view, that the Phoenissae was originally completed by Seneca, but has been
mutilated in the course of transmission. There is a recent survey of the piece by Opelt (1969).
4
A general survey of the probable prototypes of the Senecan tragedies is found in Herrmann
(1924) 247—327. The subject in detail still presents much uncertainty. There are many cases where
520
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008