Tragic Seneca by Boyle A. J

Author:Boyle, A. J. [A. J. Boyle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781134802302
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

An event is either staged or reported.

The mind is stirred less vividly through the ear

Than by what's cast before reliable eyes and which

The audience sees for itself. But don't produce on stage

What should be performed behind the scenes, and keep

From sight much which will soon be eloquently told.

Don't let Medea butcher her children in public,

Nor monstrous Atreus cook human flesh on stage,

Nor Procne turn into a bird, and Cadmus a snake.

All such displays I disbelieve and loathe.

Seneca's Medea breaks these prescriptions, and stages not only the filicide but the shedding of Medea's own blood during the Black Mass. Perhaps Thyestes is also in breach, for, although a messenger narrates the cooking of the children's flesh, their severed heads are displayed in the final act Neither Oedipus nor Phaedra would have met with Horace's approval, since Jocasta commits sexual suicide at the end of the former, as does Phaedra at the end of the latter, where the final act is particularly bloody as Theseus tries to assemble Hippolytus' corpse. The incomplete Phoenissae too probably would have climaxed in a scene of sexual suicide.36 The other three plays exhibit either no violent deaths on stage, or possibly one, if Hercules has not already left the stage when he slays the first child at Hercules Furens 992ff,37 Such violence and bloodshed could have been Vividly' represented through the use of artificial blood-bags, attested for the Roman stage from the time of Caligula.38 Much violence too is narrated in Senecan tragedy in accordance with the purest of Hellenic modes and standard Roman republican practice. In all but Medea and Phoenissae the narration of such violence is extensive. The bloody deaths of Agamemnon, of Hercules' wife and children, of Astyanax and Polyxena, of Thyestes' children, of Hippolytus, Oedipus' act of self-blinding, are conveyed to the audience aurally (per aurem, Ars Poetica 180) by messengers or eye-witnesses (in Cassandra's case a clairvoyant one). In these narrations there is a focus on the body, its inner and outer parts, their penetration and dismemberment, entirely in accord with Roman dramatic practice from its inception and with Roman poetic practice from Ovid.39

quos enim praeceps locus

reliquit artus? ossa disiecta et graui

elisa casu. signa clari corporis

et ora et illas nobiles patris notas

confudit imam pondus ad terram datum,

soluta ceruix silicis impulsu; caput

ruptum cerebro penitus expresso. iacet

deforme corpus.

(Troades 110—17)

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