Year: 1996
Type: article
Abstract: I. Lucius Annaeus Seneca's Latin Medea is a problematic play, standing on the periphery of the Western canon of dramatic literature for several important reasons. First, it remains one of the few extant instances of Latin Silver Tragedy. Another eight instances are also attributed to Seneca, with a ninth, Octavia, of dubious parentage. Second, this Medea follows sufficiently after that of Euripides in its superficial plot yet diverges substantially enough from its Euripidean inform to afford a worthy literary foil to its predecessor: serving as a catalyst for a fruitful discussion of the excellence of Greek form and substance. Third, the piece is exceptionally well-wrought—itself an excellent model of Roman maximum language. Yet the play does remain on the periphery; for on the stage or in the virtual production of the mind's eye, this Medea has been ungainly. Even Seneca's most enthusiastic champions, the Elizabethan English with their voracious appetites for fresh dramatic material, spurned the pessimistic substance of Seneca's tragedies and used them instead as models for linguistic amplification. Even the eclectic twentieth century, with its polar tastes and its own rebirth of pessimism and skepticism does not stage Seneca. Perhaps the most succinct criticism of Senecan tragedy was uttered by August Wilhelm Schlegel mid-way between the Elizabethans and the present when he characterized the plays as beyond all description bombastic and frigid, utterly devoid of nature in character and action . . . and so barren in theatrical effect that I verily believe they were never meant to leave the schools of the rhetoricians for the stage. Schlegel's statement still rings true for both the academic who cannot find the theatre in the poetry and for the director who cannot place the poetry in the theatre. In its two-thousand year history, Seneca's Medea has overwhelmed us with its Latin verse and left us cold. Yet there is something theatrical to this text that haunts the literature. In Seneca's Medea, we have a piece that is grudging in scenography, stripped of what we have come to expect as the physical stage, at the same time that we have a piece that is aggressively/?/?}^/^/. This physicality permeates the drama
Author: Jon Berry
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2173126021