Senecan Tragedy: Twelve Propositions

Abstract

I begin by stating what Senecan tragedy is not. Senecan tragedy is not a series of declamations cast into dramatic form, as Leo claimed. It is not purely verbal drama divorced from the inner psychological realities of character, as Eliot claimed. It is not character-static drama, incohesive, structureless, lifeless and monotonously versified, as Mackail and others have claimed. It is not Stoic propaganda, as Marti claimed. It is not recitation drama, if by recitation drama is meant drama to be recited by a single speaker and essentially unstageable, as Zwierlein claims. It is not a tissue of hackneyed commonplaces, as Ogilvie claimed, nor an artificial imitation of Greek tragedy, as Beare claimed; nor is it contemptible as literature, as Summers and most nineteenth and early twentieth century critics have claimed.What is Senecan tragedy? This essay presents twelve propositions, each of which isolates a characterising property of Senecan tragedy important for the understanding of it as literary and cultural artefact. These twelve propositions constitute neither an exhaustive list of such properties nor an analysis of genre. The latter question, however, I leave not to contemporary theory, but to the Codex Etruscus and the Elizabethans.