Resistance Theory Meets Drama: Tudor Seneca

Abstract

Is the there ten reason Senecan to plays rescue translated from the into cobwebbed English in attic the of 1550s literary and history 1560s, the ten Senec n plays translated into English in he 1550s and 1560s, anthologized in 1581? Except under duress, few scholars read them now. We postromantics lionize original composition, not translation. Poetically, their ragged fourteeners and jogging pentameter couplets provoke smiles or groans.1 ( Medea alone affords such immortal words as rigor rough of ramping rage from burning breast out cast; Thy thumps of thwacking bolts; and Whose swelling knobs of wondrous size and boisťrous bobbing bumps /Doth thump the great and lesser bear that feel his heavy lumps.) But yes: we should revere those modest versifiers. In the teeth of critical contempt and neglect, I nominate these intrepid translators for a posthumous medal of literary honor, for serious commitment to political resistance in a time of repression. The rare exploration of the translations' political commitment is usually confined to viewing them as a conventional speculum principis , or advice book (literally, mirror) for princes. Jessica Winston posits that many of the translators saw Senecan tragedy as a classical version of advice-to-princes poetry.2 In contrast, I suggest that they were advice-to-subjects poetry, intervening in contemporary radical discourse.3 Seething with tyranny, power abuse, and resistance, the translations were contemporary with resistance writing, which justified (in the absence of peaceable means of redress) violent overthrow of tyrants, particularly Mary Tiidor (Mary I, queen