From the outset Neo-Latin drama was predominantly oriented towards ancient drama. This was facilitated by the availability of printed editions of Roman comedies and tragedies, which ranged from expensive volumes with extensive commentaries to more economical octavo and duodecimo editions. The accessibility of these texts thus played a pivotal role in their reception. Tragedy, however, followed a slightly divergent trajectory from comedy, while tradition did not prevent innovation.1
1 Tragedy – Seneca and Greek Tragedians
Neo-Latin drama first emerged in Italy in imitation of Seneca tragicus. In the Middle Ages, the ten tragedies written by or ascribed to the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c.4 BCE–65 CE) tragedies were little known.2 Fragments survived in anthologies, and only one manuscript of the tragedies existed.3 The presentation of the plays left the readers in the dark as to whether these dramas were written in verse or prose. However, the discovery of another manuscript (Codex Etruscus, eleventh/twelfth century), which contained nine of the ten plays (only the Roman history play [fabula praetexta] Octavia missing), brought about an increase in the popularity of the tragedies. The Paduan proto-humanist and judge Lovato dei Lovati (1240/41–1309) rediscovered this manuscript in the Abbey of Pomposa, about 85 kilometres from Padua, near Ferrara, at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. This discovery significantly enhanced the knowledge of these tragedies, which were subsequently copied many times. Lovati added an essay to his manuscript based on two manuscripts at his disposal in which he discussed Seneca’s metres.4
The editio princeps of all of Seneca’s tragedies, which dealt with Greek mythological or historical stories, appeared in Ferrara some sixty years later, between 1478 and 1485.5 Humanists such as the Parisian printer Jodocus Badius Ascensius (1514) and the Louvain humanist Justus Lipsius (included in the Raphelengius edition of 1598) made critical editions and wrote commentaries. The most famous and influential commentary was written by the Spanish-Dutch Jesuit Martín Antonio Delrío (1551–1608), Syntagma tragoediae latinae (1593–94).6 Furthermore, humanists observed that certain plays were incomplete and felt the need to remedy this – or to make other additions. For instance, the Oxford jurist William Gager (1555–1622) wrote a Prologus and a Panniculus Hippolyto Assutus (1591) to Seneca’s Hippolytus (or Phaedra), and the Roman professor Hendrik Kieffel or Henricus Chifellius (1583–1657) wrote additions to the incompletely transmitted Phoenissae (1625).7
A rare tragedy drawing inspiration from Aeschylus (particularly his Prometheus vinctus) is Parabata vinctus sive triumphus Christi (‘The Devil Bound or the Triumph of Christ’, 1595) by Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553–1617). In this play the conventional characters of Prometheus, Hephaestus, Oceanus and Io are substituted by Lucifer, the archangel Michael, Job, Elijah and John the Baptist.
Seneca’s tragedies became the dominant model to such an extent that the history of Neo-Latin tragedy is mainly the history of creative imitation and adaptation of these ten plays.8 The earliest extant Neo-Latin tragedy, Mussato’s Ecerinis (1314), is already characterised by a Senecan five-act structure with a chorus, the use of monologue and dialogue and the iambic trimeter for the narrative parts.9 Although Mussato did not utilise characters from Graeco-Roman mythology, he acknowledged that the protagonist bore resemblance to Seneca’s Medea and Thyestes. This awareness is attributed to his previous composition of Argumenta, addressing Seneca’s extant tragedies. The Pseudo-Senecan historical tragedy Octavia, a fabula praetexta, also served as a source of inspiration. It is evident that Mussato’s understanding of the concept of tragedy was not yet fully developed, as evidenced by the title, Ecerinis (the name Ezzelino is Latinised into Ecerinus, with the suffix -is replacing -us), reminiscent of epic titles, such as Virgil’s Aeneid. During this era humanists interpreted the term ‘tragic’ as signifying the atrocities of tyrants and denoting plays possessing a lamentable, cruel narrative. Within such a plot the distinction between tragedy and epic becomes blurred.
After Mussato’s Ecerinis and Latin tragedies in the style of Seneca about the Greek hero Achilles (c.1390) and the Ovidian figure Procne (c.1428) the tradition ended with a tragedy about the hero of Carthage in the war against the Romans, Leonardo Dati’s Hiensal (1441/42).10 The young students were probably more interested in comedy and joy than in the serious sadness of tragedy. Moreover, the Christian Church has always had difficulties with drama (it was thought to be associated with licentiousness, and acting is lying to be someone else).11 The most famous definition of tragedy to date was that of the medieval philosopher Boethius: Quid tragoediarum clamor aliud deflet nisi indiscreto ictu fortunam felicia regna vertentem? (‘What else does the cry of tragedy deplore but that fortune makes prosperous kingdoms fall by an indiscriminate blow?’).12
A flourishing of Seneca’s reception occurred in the Low Countries at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Daniel Heinsius and Hugo Grotius sought to enhance the quality of Netherlandish tragedy by writing Senecan tragedies. Their efforts inspired others. It was also in the Netherlands that the Spanish Jesuit philologist Martín Delrío wrote his extensive commentary on Seneca’s dramas, Syntagma tragoediae.13
Early modern Latin tragedy was inspired by Seneca’s dramas in the language (choice of words and expressions), metre (the iambic trimeter for the action and lyric metres for the choruses) and (elevated) style, the use of sententiae (aphorisms) and structure. Seneca’s tragedies consist of five acts with a chorus between the acts. Early manuscripts, however, did not indicate the division into acts; therefore Albertino Mussato had no acts in Ecerinis, but did write the play in verse. The use of the chorus permitted a range of forms, from very brief choruses to extensive ones. A notable example of this is the oeuvre of the Belgian humanist Jacobus Cornelius Lummenaeus a Marca (c.1580–c.1625), who wrote tragedies in which the choruses exceeded the length of the action parts.
Playwrights of the early modern period frequently adopted the Stoic worldview, with their plays being regarded as a cautionary tale against excessive display of emotion or as a metaphor for life as theatre, a concept that can be traced back to the works of Seneca, who employed the term spectaculum, a concept associated with Baroque literature.14
All this did not prevent a great deal of variation. Many authors endeavoured to compose what might be termed Senecan drama, introducing new themes, while others incorporated song, dance and music. Some writers opted for prose as a medium, a choice influenced by the perceived resemblance of iambic metres to prose as well as by the challenges associated with metrical verse. An exemplar of this approach is Caussin’s Hermenegildus (1620). Stefano Tuccio wrote Christus patiens between 1565 and 1669 in hexameters, a metre he regarded more appropriate for a Christian tragedy. The choruses were written not only in stichic lyric metres (wherein each line is composed in the same metre), but also in alternating verses or even stanzas.
Greek tragedy became known only later. During the Middle Ages, the knowledge of Greek had almost disappeared. Following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, this knowledge was revived, as Byzantine scholars fled to Italy and taught Greek to the first humanists there.15 Besides the Greek language, the metres and structures (with episodia and stasima) of the three famous Greek tragedians of the fifth century BCE Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, were an obstacle. The editiones principes of Greek tragedy are dated to c.1495 (Euripides, part), 1502 (Sophocles), 1503 (Euripides, all plays) and 1518 (Aeschylus), with that of comedy dating from 1498 (Aristophanes).16 It is noteworthy that all these first editions were printed in Italy. The knowledge of Greek tragedy increased after the first translations into Latin, notably by Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), who utilised Euripides’ Hecuba and Iphigeneia (1506) as exercises to learn Greek, and George Buchanan, who translated Medea (1544) and Alcestis (1556) to be performed by his students in Bordeaux.17 Subsequent translations were published, including those of all seventeen surviving tragedies of Euripides by the German scholar Gasparus Stiblinus (1526–1562/63), which appeared in 1562, and the tragedies of Sophocles by the Dutch Greek scholar – a student of Macropedius – Georgius Ratallerus (1528–1581) in 1570. The English scholar Roger Ascham (c.1515–1568) translated Sophocles’ Philoctetes (c.1540). The Paris printer Henricus Stephanus or Henri Estienne published the bilingual Tragoediae selectae Aeschyli, Sophoclis, Euripidis (‘Selected Tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides’) in 1567. Such translations undoubtedly contributed to the familiarity with Greek tragedy, yet the pre-eminence of Seneca’s oeuvre hindered the reception of Greek drama. The Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius was familiar with Greek drama, publishing Excerpta ex tragoediis et comoediis Graecis (‘Excerpts from Greek Tragedies and Comedies’) in 1626 and translating Euripides’ Phoenissae (‘Phoenician Women’) into Latin, which was printed in 1630, to which he added a fundamental introduction. The Polish poet of Armenian descent Simon Simonides or Szymon Szymonowic (1558–1629) modelled his Latin tragedies Castus Ioseph (1587) and Penthesilea (1614) on Greek tragedy, especially Euripides’ Hippolytus, and structured them accordingly into parodos, episodia, stasima and exodos.18
2 Comedy – Plautus and Terence
As with tragedy, in the case of comedy, the Latin plays by Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, c.195/190–159 BCE) and Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus, c.254–184 BCE) were the best known, whereas Greek comedy became more familiar only later.19 In the Middle Ages eight comedies of Plautus were known. Terence’s plays were widely read in schools, due to the elegance of their Latin and the beauty of their aphorisms with moral implications. However, these plays were not studied as verse to be performed, but as prose dialogues to be read, as they were presented in the manuscripts. The rediscovery of Donatus’ fourth-century commentary on the comedies of Terence fostered the interpretation of these plays as dramas, as Donatus treated them as such. In the commentary he demonstrated a keen interest in the performative aspects. The first printed edition of Terence’s plays appeared in Strasbourg in 1470, and numerous editions followed, ranging from large folio volumes to small duodecimo booklets.20 The first performance since antiquity that we know of took place in Florence in 1476, when Terence’s Andria was brought to the stage, which would be followed by numerous other performances. Donatus’ commentary was also frequently printed, often with four other commentaries written by the ancient commentator Servius and the humanists Guido Iuvenalis, Ioannes Calphurnius and Iodocus Badius Ascensius (Terentius cum quinque commentis [‘Terence with Five Commentaries’]). This collection was printed in Venice in 1504 and was reprinted many times. Another remarkable commentary was written by the German physician and philologist Iodocus Willichius or Willich (1501–1552), who provided a comprehensive rhetorical commentary on each scene.
Plautus, whose plays were never part of the school curriculum, was thought to have written about 130 plays.21 As stated, eight of these were known in the Middle Ages, until 1425, when Nicolaus Cusanus discovered a Cologne manuscript containing twelve further plays. This manuscript formed the basis of the editio princeps of 1472. The twenty-one plays that have survived to the present day correspond with the canon established by Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century BCE. The plays were fabulae palliatae, plays in Greek style (characterized by the Greek pallium) and often imitations of Greek plays, representing a Greek culture and the characters having Greek names. Humanist playwrights imitated or emulated the style of these two Roman comedians, albeit without the Greek atmosphere, yet frequently giving their plays Greek titles, such as Acolastus (‘The Unbridled One’) by Gnapheus or Philodoxeos fabula (‘Play of the Lover of Fame’) by Alberti.
It is important to note that the role of ancient Roman comedy was different from that of its early modern Latin counterpart. Plautus and Terence wrote their plays with the intention of entertaining audiences who were proficient in Latin, whereas humanists primarily aimed to educate audiences who were partially familiar with Latin, but not necessarily proficient, or who possessed a more general knowledge of the language. Consequently, Roman comedy bore a resemblance to farce, whereas early modern Latin comedy manifested itself in diverse forms, ranging from farcical plays to biblical or hagiographical dramas, and from comedies about school and university life to allegorical plays.
In the manuscripts ancient Roman comedies were not divided into acts and scenes, and so some humanists, especially in the early stages, continued this practice. The early prints, however, had such a division. The metres of Roman comedy had to be rediscovered. Editions appeared bearing the title: Terentius in sua metra restitutus (e.g. Venice 1516 and Florence 1532).22 Even after that, some humanists were aware of the most common metre of Roman comedy, the iambic senarian, whilst others utilised the metre of Roman tragedy, the iambic trimeter, which is subject to stricter rules of resolution.
The humanists wrote comedies in the style of Plautus and Terence, and tragicomedies after Plautus, who had labelled his Amphitryon a tragicomedy.23 It is important to note, however, that they did not merely imitate Plautus and Terence. A notable distinction emerged in their approach to the incorporation of choruses, a feature setting their works apart from ancient comedies, which typically did not incorporate such elements. This addition was inspired by Horace’s Ars poetica, in which the Roman poet wrote (ll. 193–195): actoris partis chorus officiumque virili | defendat, neu quid medios intercinat actus, | quod non proposito conducat et haereat apte (‘Let the chorus uphold the part and the strenuous duty of an actor, and sing nothing between the acts that does not advance and fit in with the action’), by Seneca’s tragedies, which included choruses, or by the desire to have more –and younger – student actors active at performances. These choruses could vary from songs with a medieval slant and medieval rhymed verse and set to music to formal ancient metres such as the Sapphic stanza. Next to these additions, some humanists introduced ‘little devils’ (daemones or cacodaemones) from medieval drama.24
A fundamental difference in worldview exists between ancient and humanist comedy. Whereas ancient comedy usually takes the side of the younger generation, humanist drama tends to uphold the prevailing social order. For example, in Plautus’ Aulularia (‘The Pot of Gold’) the elderly miser Euclio finds a treasure in a pot and wants to retain it for himself, only to be outmanoeuvred by a slave. Consequently, Euclio agrees to his daughter’s marriage with a young neighbour, who in turn returns the pot. This dynamic can be interpreted as a reflection of the ancient playwright’s belief that the younger generation embodies the future. Incidentally, the end of Aulularia is lost; so some humanists, such as the Louvain humanist and theologian Martinus Dorpius or Martin van Dorp (1485–1525), added their own endings based on ancient accounts. In contrast, in Gnapheus’ Acolastus the younger son departs into the world, but subsequently repents, resulting in the restoration of the previous state. In other words, Plautus’ play – and Roman comedy in general – is about renewal and the future, Gnapheus’ play – like many others – is about tradition and the past. This is, of course, a generalisation. A counter-example can be found in Reuchlin’s Henno, in which the daughter of the peasant couple marries the cunning slave, akin to the daughter of the house marrying the young neighbour in Aulularia.
See Bahlmann 1896a; Bloemendal 2014a.
On the reception of Seneca’s tragedies, see, e.g., Dodson-Robinson 2016. On Senecan reception in early modern drama in general, see Lefèvre 1978; Schubert 2010: 891–910. On Senecan reception in England, see Baumann 1989, and on Senecan reception in Italy, Paratore 1980. For the Czech lands, see Popelková 2019. For Germany and the Netherlands, see Worp 1892 and Stachel 1907. On the debate about the author(s) of the Senecan corpus, see, e.g. Mayer 1994.
On the transmission of Seneca’s tragedies, see, e.g. Hine 1986: 378–81 and Landfester 2007: 539–45.
See, e.g., Witt 2000: 100.
ISTC is00433000; Sandys 1903–1908, vol. 2: 103 gives as dates: between 1474 and 1478.
Machielsen 2015: 137–59 (‘A Tale of Two Senecas’).
Gager 1981; IJsewijn 2015.
French neoclassical tragedy, the German Trauerspiel, Dutch tragedy and English Elizabethan tragedy were inspired by Seneca’s dramas as well.
See above, pp. 6–7.
See above, pp. 7–8.
See Dox 2004.
Boethius, De consolatione Philosophiae 2.pr. 2.12.
See previous page.
See Seneca, Epistulae morales 89.1: simillimum mundo spectaculum. Schubert 2010: cols. 882–86. See also Mayer 1994; Segal 1984. On Baroque, see Bloemendal and Smith 2016: 27–37.
See above, p. 2 and n. 11.
For a list of editiones principes, see Sandys 1903–1908, vol. 2: 104–05.
Erasmus 1969; Buchanan 1983.
See Bloemendal 2017.
See also Hardin 2018. On Terence reception, see, e.g., Francke 1877; Norland 1995; Holtermann, ‘Aristophanes’ in Walde 2010: cols. 91–120.
For the transmission of Terence’s plays, see Reynolds 1986: 412–20 and Landfester 2007: 581–86.
For the transmission of Plautus’ plays, see Reynolds 1986: 302–07 and Landfester 2007: 474–79.
Philologus 1505.
On Plautus’ Amphitryon as a tragicomedy, see above, p. 74.
See IJsewijn and Sacré 1998: 141.