Shakespeare and the Fall of the Roman Republic by Patrick Gray

Author:Patrick Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

The raging rocks

And shivering shocks

Shall break the locks

Of prison gates;

And Phibbus’ car

Shall shine from far

And make and mar

The foolish Fates.

(1.2.27–34)

This spoof conflates two passages from John Studley’s translation of Hercules Oetaeus.29 ‘Phibbus’ car’ appears in the opening two lines, Sator deorum, cuius excussum manu / utraeque Phoebi sentient fulmen domus (‘Sire of the gods, whose hand launches the thunderbolts felt by both homes of Phoebus . . .’), which Studley translates, ‘O LORDE of Ghostes whose fyrye flashe (that forth thy hand doth shake) / Doth cause the trembling Lodges twain of Phoebus car to quake . . .’30 ‘Raging rocks’ that ‘break the locks’ appear in Deianira’s nurse’s boast about the scope of her magic powers, habuere motum saxa, discussi fores / umbrasque Ditis (‘rocks have started to move; I have shattered the doors and darkness of Dis’), which Studley renders as ‘the roring rocks have quaking sturd, and none thereat hath pusht. / Hell gloummy gates I have brast oape.’31 Essentially, Shakespeare combines the first two lines of the play, as if to signal his source, with another two lines from further in, chosen to reflect the speaker, Bottom, and the situation. Like Deianira’s nurse, Bottom is a lower-class character, claiming unusual power. He is attempting to help, in this case, Peter Quince with his casting decision, and, as with Deianira and her nurse, his solicitous attention does more harm than good.

Bottom himself, however, is very satisfied with this piece of doggerel. ‘This was lofty!’ (1.2.35) he concludes. ‘This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein’ (1.2.36). Bottom’s admiration for ‘Ercles’ seems to have led Ayres to imagine that Shakespeare saw Seneca’s Hercules as akin to Bottom himself. But the butt of the joke is more the translation, as well as outmoded methods of acting, than it is Hercules. Bottom mangles his source material, much as he does the two Greek names he attempts: ‘Ercles’ for Hercules, ‘Phibbus’ for Phoebus. It is also worth noting that Bottom himself does not intend to be amusing. From his perspective, the material is ‘lofty’. The problem is not Hercules, but rather Bottom’s own inadequacy and grandiosity. A similar mismatch occurs in another early comedy, as well, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and again in a play-within-a-play, the pageant of the Nine Worthies. Like Bottom, the character playing Hercules is woefully ill-suited for the role, albeit physically, rather than intellectually: the slightly built page, Moth, falls far short of Herculean stature. ‘Great Hercules is presented by this imp’ (5.2.609), explains Holofernes. ‘Quoniam he seemeth in minority / Ergo I come with this apology’ (5.2.613–14).32 The introduction of Hercules here suggests Shakespeare may indeed have seen some sort of connection between Hercules and Caesar: the original set of the Nine Worthies, established by tradition on the Continent in the Middle Ages, did not include Hercules, but instead Julius Caesar.33

The analogy to be drawn, however, is not between Caesar and Hercules himself, but instead between Shakespeare’s Caesar and Shakespeare’s comic actors, Moth and Bottom. Like them, he has set himself a role which exceeds his true capacity.

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