Neo-Latin Drama Research Articles

Biblical Stories on the Medieval and Early Modern Stage: A Transnational Approach

Abstract This contribution offers a survey of the field of biblical drama research and of several approaches. It makes a plea for a transnational approach of studying early modern drama, especially biblical drama. Such a transnational approach is a continuation of many of these earlier approaches, makes use of some and breaks with others. The contribution also shows that it is important to include Neo-Latin drama in the study of early modern drama at the cost of losing sight on a crucial constituent part of the development of this drama and this theatre. Neo-Latin drama contributed to the knowledge and reception of the Bible among the elites and among the ordinary people who attended performances of these plays or of one of the many translations and adapations.

Proximate Translation: George Buchanan's Baptistes, Sophocles’ Antigone, and Early Modern English Drama

This essay takes up the question of what impact Greek tragedy had on original plays written in Latin in the sixteenth century. In exploring George Buchanan's biblical drama Baptistes sive calumnia (printed 1577) and its reworking of scenes and images from Sophocles' Antigone, we see how neo-Latin drama provided a valuable channel for the sharing and shaping of early modern ideas about Greek tragedy. The impact of the Baptistes on English drama is then examined, with particular reference to Thomas Watson's celebrated Latin translation of Antigone (1581). The strange affinities between Watson's and Buchanan's plays reveal the potential for Greek tragedy to shape early modern drama, but also for early modern drama to shape how Greek tragedy itself was read and received in early modern England.

To teach and not to shock. The Czech Brethren’s and Lutherans’ theatre in Leszno as an educational tool - casus of the drama Susanna, ex Danielis 13, tragoedia (1646)

The school theatre in a Protestant gymnasium in Leszno bloomed between 1639 and 1656 thanks to, amongst others, Jan Amos Komenski. One of the plays staged there was a drama Susanna, ex Danielis 13, tragoedia (1646) probably written by Jan Jerzy Szlichtyng who used the virtuous Susanna’s theme from the Bible in an original and yet utilitarian way. The author reduced theological and moral content, present in other adaptations of this theme, in order to focus on showing the stages of court proceedings in Poland, so the young actors – Lesnaeum students – had a chance of gaining some valuable knowledge about the law and practice the useful court rthetoric in Latin. The first act of the play, being an introduction to the main theme of the play (law and rhetoric in court) was taken by Szlichtyng (?) from a neolatin drama of Nikodem Frischlin, namely Susanna comoedia nova (1577). The comparative analysis of the original and the 17th century’s adaptation leads to a conclusion about the decorum of manners in the Protestant gymnasium. The Polish author removed not only the sexual abuse thread – Susanna strongly molested by the elders and forced to prostitution – but also passages from Frischlin regarding the use of rhetoric in ars amandi, as well as the heroine’s tirades proving her intelligence and scriptural erudition. As a result, the elders’ image has been a little whitewashed and Susanna appears solely as a chaste and noble wife. Such a representation of the heroine – honest but not too sophisticated – and elders – cunning but not too lecherous – was in a harmony with the 17th century’s cultural conventionalities unfamiliar with mulier docta and demanding that youth respects the elderly.

REPRESENTING TURKISHNESS IN NEO-LATIN DRAMA: THE CASE OF SOLYMANNIDAE

The Elizabethan period witnessed a proliferation of Neo-Latin drama in Oxford and Cambridge universities and in the Inns of Court. Despite the sheer bulk of academic drama and its role in paving the way for the mature drama written in the vernacular, it has not yet received adequate critical attention. Consequently, this paper tries to shed some light on this neglected genre by presenting a reading of the surviving drama Solymannidae — a play which draws on the history of the Ottoman dynasty. In creating action and characters the anonymous playwright borrowed extensively from the classical dramatic conventions, but, at the same time, he was original in representing the Turkish cultural identity. The discussion unveils the drama’s pioneering role in introducing plots from Eastern history on the English stage and its contribution in formulating the dramaturgical practices to perform them. In this paper there is also an attempt to verify Solymannidae’s source. The present inquiry aims to extend our knowledge of English Neo-Latin drama which is customarily excluded from the mainstream of scholarship.

History, Power, and the Providential Order in the Neo-Latin Drama „Theodoricus” by Nicolaus Vernulaeus

This paper aims at presenting the way in which Nicolaus Vernulaeus 1583–1649 combines in his Neo-Latin drama Theodoricus. Rex Italiae Theodoric, the King of Italy history and current public affairs with the philosophico-theological view of the Divine governance over the world. The title character is juxtaposed with other chief men in the late Roman state: Boethius, Symmachus, and John. The author of the article considers the role of history in this play and the way in which the idea of Providence is engaged in the description of one episode taken from antiquity. In Vernulaeus’ text ancient history becomes an implicit costume which serves as ethical enhancement of its viewer or reader, by means such as making allusions to the current political situation.

The Senecan Aesthetic: A Performance History by Helen Slaney

Reviewed by: The Senecan Aesthetic: A Performance History by Helen Slaney Gordon Braden Helen Slaney. The Senecan Aesthetic: A Performance History. Classical Presences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xi, 320. $120.00. ISBN 978-0-19-873676-9. A “performance history” of plays for which the first chapter of that history is unknowable seems like a perverse proposition, but Slaney brings it off, at times brilliantly. She clearly favors the suggestion that Seneca’s scripts were originally performed as tragoedia saltata, declamatory recitation or singing accompanied by pantomime. She expends no energy arguing the point historically, however (she doesn’t mention it until fairly late), but concentrates on the disposition of voice and body such performance would imply, one which “uncouples the figures who are (verbally) represented from the body of the actor performing them” (21). From that uncoupling derives an inclusive dramatic aesthetic that Slaney analyses into nine interrelated manifestations, which the ancient scripts only partly explore (metatheatricality, for instance, is only passingly evident in them); in an adroit distinction, the originals are “Senecan” in that they were written by Seneca, but the aesthetic “senecan” in a more open sense, extending beyond revivals and imitations and interacting over time with changing conventions of theatrical practice. The result is a strong narrative line whereby European theater explores, backs away from, and then—excitingly but unevenly—rediscovers the potential of senecan dramaturgy. Enlightened discussions of Kleist’s Penthesilea (actually recited with pantomime in one nineteenth-century performance) and Shelley’s The Cenci are good enough to make much of the point. But Slaney’s conceptualization of her topic also makes senecan dramaturgy relevant to the history of European theater even when it is not being practiced: a path European theater is deliberately not taking, a sinister double (occasionally vehemently denounced, as by Schlegel) to an evolving [End Page 286] notion of the pièce bien faite, but always there, ready to return in the theatrical experimentation of the twentieth century. Four chapters cover well-traveled territory (Tamburlaine, The Spanish Tragedy), though there also are striking novelties. The importance of Neo-Latin drama widely performed in the universities and some vernacular descendants of it (Robert Garnier) is widely recognized but has attracted little interest; for Slaney this strain is central and receives innovatively sympathetic attention. The originality of her general argument comes fully into the light when the fading of Seneca’s reputation is seen as part of a larger “repression” of senecan possibilities; a virtuoso chapter presents Racine’s Phèdre as shaped on several levels precisely by that repression. Chapters on later, more thorough “repression” focus on works that, though intended for the stage, had increasing difficulty making it there. The Cenci is eventually taken up by none other than Antonin Artaud for performance; he repeatedly cites Seneca as an important precedent for his Theatre of Cruelty. Slaney follows through on this advocacy more thoroughly than anyone else, with a careful look at what can be reconstructed about Artaud’s Cenci and at the line of descent through Artaud’s disciples. But she does not make it more of a triumphant return than it actually is. Of Artaud’s Cenci: “If there was any point at which Seneca was to have been revived as a major player in the development of twentieth-century tragedy, it would have been this” (241). But the production (Artaud’s last) was a failure, partly for contingent reasons, but also because of Artaud’s conception of the theater: “Artaud . . . mistrusted language altogether,” and in so doing “lost touch with the senecan aesthetic and its rhetorical deployment of the spoken word” (242). Later efforts make more use of the text, but in being more “Senecan” are actually less “senecan”; Caryl Churchill’s Thyestes “is deliberately flattened and compressed into a commonplace, informal register” (277). Slaney’s intelligent asperity continues in a tart conclusion, where she rejects the kind of gesture (“many of Seneca’s central themes seem particularly urgent and relevant in the current political and social climate”) with which discussions like this often end. The Senecan “hell on earth” is not to be so glibly invoked: “Some day, a relevant climate may indeed come...

Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy ed. by Jan Bloemendal and Nigel Smith

Reviewed by: Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy ed. by Jan Bloemendal and Nigel Smith Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez Jan Bloemendal and Nigel Smith, editors. Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy. BRILL, 2016. 442 pp. TRAGEDY IS ONE OF THE MOST DISTINCTIVE ancient genres, a well-known object of high literary prestige. However, the consensus that surrounds its relevance starts to wane when attempting to come to a definition of the genre itself. Criticism has frequently focused on dissociating the tragic and tragedy as genre (or mode). If somebody, like the two editors of this well-grounded volume, adds furthermore the permeable qualifications Baroque and Classicist to the term tragedy, the challenge is considerable. Nonetheless, the authors in this collection of essays delve forcefully into the intricacies of Baroque and Classicist tragedy with the wish to contribute to the scholarly debate on the use of these terms within the history of drama and theater, and of political theology. The focus lies on the conjoined character of politics and aesthetics, since "tragedy was an 'aesthetic' way of thinking about many things, and it was particularly suited to rumination upon public affairs" (5). This drama, mainly concerned with the well-known theme of exposing the evils of political tyranny, articulated over time more elaborate and sophisticated themes reflecting on sovereignty, religion, authority, righteousness of rebellion, ethical issues, etc. Tragedy, as undeniable part of the public sphere, exposed, supported, or challenged current perspectives and revealed par excellence the power of literature, and particularly of theater. The book's fourteen chapters are organized into four sections, following an impressive introduction by the two editors, Jan Bloemendal and Nigel Smith, that serves to successfully frame the sections against the historical backdrop of tragedy and to clarify the rationale of the volume. It also offers a wealth of relevant bibliography to date. The four parts that constitute the spine of the volume are sovereignty, religion, ethics, and mobility. With this last part, maybe not obvious at a first glance, the book contributes also to the knowledge of cultural migration of literature throughout Europe and engages with the most recent research lines on the transnational transmission of theater. [End Page 123] Notwithstanding this formal structure into four thematic blocks, the limits are obviously porous and many of these topics come to the fore in the other parts as well. In this way, we see, for instance, that the contribution on Cicognini (essay 9) is categorized under 'ethics' but also deals with sovereignty and intense cultural exchange, or that religion is strongly present in the essay on French tragedy also placed under ethics (essay 10) or how in essay 11 (theme mobility) the focus lies on plays that concentrate on the overarching trend that increasingly separates political sovereignty from morality. The valuable aspects of this book are manifold. One of the main assets is the focus on the intimate links between tragedy and history and the special attention paid to a field that has received less attention than the treatment of history in contemporary vernacular drama: the rich magnitude of historical themes in Neo-Latin theater. Neo-Latin authors do not merely relate to ancient paradigms, in a form of continuation of the tragic drama, but rather reveal the relevant role of Neo-Latin drama in the development of European drama, showing how the humanist tradition from the Low Countries, for instance, exercised unparalleled influence on other contexts like the German lands. Another relevant aspect is the attention paid to Counter Reformation tragedy, a corpus that has been frequently dismissed in the past, whereas the theatrical repertoire of the Baroque tragedy of Jesuits can be considered as a global phenomenon. Far from offering a monolithic 'success model,' their repertoire displayed an incredible variety of form and contents since they were always open to local traditions and resources (essay 6). Equally interesting is the fact that this volume reminds us how the establishment of national literatures in the nineteenth century strongly focused on the singularity of all vernacular European literatures, and therefore on the singularity of separate national tragedies, whereas the European world of letters was obviously created in a flow of...

Neo-Latin Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe, edited by Jan Bloemendal & Howard B. Norland

Neo-Latin Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe, edited by Jan Bloemendal & Howard B. Norland

Jan Bloemendal and Howard B. Norland, eds. Neo-Latin Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe. Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe 3. Leiden: Brill, 2013. xiii + 794 pp. $228. ISBN: 978-90-04-25342-1.

Jan Bloemendal and Howard B. Norland, eds. Neo-Latin Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe. Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe 3. Leiden: Brill, 2013. xiii + 794 pp. $228. ISBN: 978-90-04-25342-1. - Volume 67 Issue 4

Twin Likeness and imitatio in Ruggle's Ignoramus and Hausted's Senile Odium

Neo-Latin drama largely functioned as a supplement to university education in early modern England, proving an ideal medium to articulate humanistic principles. However, during the reign of James I, these plays began engaging with less strictly academic ideas. This article examines how George Ruggle's Ignoramus (1615) and Peter Hausted's Senile Odium (1631) promote the humanistic principle of imitatio and, so doing, comment on broader cultural issues. While in many ways typical academic dramas, these plays feature twin characters, linking them to imitatio. This article argues that in celebrating imitatio, these plays also elevate and promote the twin condition, shunning stereotypes.

Thematic and Generic Medievalism in the Polish Neo-Latin Drama of the Renaissance and Baroque

Thematic and Generic Medievalism in the Polish Neo-Latin Drama of the Renaissance and Baroque

Textuality versus Performativity in Neo-Latin Drama: Johannes Reuchlin's "Henno"

In 1522, Erasmus added a dialogue to his Colloquia Familiaria. Entitled Apotheosis Capnionis, it was dedicated to the memory of the German humanist scholar, Johannes Reuchlin, who had died at the age of sixty-seven on the thirtieth of June that year.' Erasmus's dialogue provides terms with which to discuss the tensions in German-speaking central Europe between opposing cultural pressures: the classicizing tendencies of humanist high culture, and the tendency of vernacular culture since the medieval period to be rooted in popular forms. With reference to the dramatic tradition in particular, the dialogue suggests that the surface, textual fidelity of Reuchlin's dramas to respectable models of classical learnedness (the characteristic emphasized by the German humanists and later scholars) often masks their potentially disruptive performative energies their creative appropriation of subversive sources not only in the classical tradition, but also in popular forms somewhat closer to home.2

Reviews

Reviews Get access Robert Greene's Planetomachia and the Text of the Third Tragedy: A Bibliographical Explanation and a New Edition of the Text . Edited with an introduction and notes by D. F. BRATCHELL . Pp. ix+82 . Amersham : Avebury , 1979 . No price given. Pseudomagia: A Neo-Latin Drama by William Mewe . Edited and translated by JOHN C. COLDEWEY and BRIAN P. COPENHAVER , with a note on the Latin by J. W. Binns. Pp. 177 . Nieuwkoop : B. De Graaf , 1979 . 75 Dutch glds. JOHN FEATHER JOHN FEATHER Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 29, Issue 1, February 1982, Pages 69–71, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/29-1-69 Published: 01 February 1982

The Latin Drama of the Renaissance (1340-1640)

The Latin drama of the Renaissance and Reformation has been studied mostly in Germany. Bahlmann and Bolte laid the bibliographical foundations in the 1890s, and at the same time Creizenach was publishing the volumes of his great Geschichte des neueren Dramas, which still contain the most comprehensive survey that we have of neo-Latin drama up to 1550. Rossi and Sanesi have dealt to some extent with the Latin drama in Italy, but their treatment is superficial compared with Creizenach's. In French there is no significant scholarly work in this field. In England J. A. Symonds gave a good account of the humanist drama in his Renaissance in Italy (1875) twenty years before Creizenach, but it was not until the appearance of Boas’ University Drama in the Tudor Age in 1907 that any work on Anglo-Latin dramatists was available.

A Check-List of Original Neo-Latin Dramas by Continental Writers Printed Before 1650

The following list is meant to be a useful tool in locating authors and copies of books; it is not a complete bibliography of all editions. In most cases only the earliest ones available have been noted. Modern editions of separate plays have been listed when found, but modern editions of the works of the various authors have not been included. For Latin plays written by Englishmen, including those printed on the Continent, see Alfred Harbage's “Census of Anglo-Latin Plays,” PMLA, liii, 624–629.