III DIRECT BORROWINGS FROM SENECAN TRAGEDIES
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus and Harris, Ella Isabel
We need give but little space to remarks upon the extent to which English dramatists borrowed directly from the Roman tragedies, for such borrowings were of far less moment in the evolution of the modern drama than the more fundamental imitation of form and structure already noted; their chief interest indeed lies outside the scope of dramatic study, and is to be found in the fact that they serve to mark English sympathy for certain phases of Roman thought.
The adornment of new tragedies by portions borrowed from Seneca calls into use most frequently the phrases which are the expression of a dark and hopeless philosophy. The fatalism referred to in preceding lines as characterizing the Elizabethan tragedies of blood had a strong hold upon the English mind from a much earlier date. One need not wonder that the thought which colored so early a poem as Beowulf, and which came to the surface in the conscious philosophy of a later time to reënter literature in the works of Alexander Pope, should have attracted the attention of Englishmen of the sixteenth century when they found it in a writer of such literary prestige and philosophic renown as Seneca.
A careful reader of Seneca will recognize the borrowings of English dramatists the more readily as such borrowings follow closely not only the thought but the language of the original.
Mr. John W. Cunliffe, in his monograph on "The Influence of Seneca on English Tragedy," has given a careful and detailed comparison with their originals of Senecan passages in "The Misfortunes of Arthur." In a less detailed way he indicates the borrowings of other English authors; on pages 25, 26 of his book we find:—
"Seneca had written in the 'Agamemnon,'
'Per scelera semper sceleribus tutum est iter.'
This is translated by Studley:—
'The safest path to mischiefe is by mischiefe open still.'
Thomas Hughes has it, in 'The Misfortunes of Arthur,' I. 4:—
'The safest passage is from bad to worse.'
Marston, in 'The Malcontent,' V. 2:—
'Black deed only through black deed safely flies.'
Shakespeare, in 'Macbeth,' III. 2:—
'Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.'
Jonson, in 'Catiline,' I. 2:—
'The ills that I have done cannot be safe But by attempting greater.'
Webster, in 'The White Devil,' II. 1:—
'Small mischiefs are by greater made secure.'
Lastly, in Massinger's 'Duke of Milan,' II. 1, Francisca says:—
'All my plots Turn back upon myself, but I am in, And must go on; and since I have put off From the shore of innocence, guilt be now my pilot! Revenge first wrought me; murder's his twin brother: One deadly sin then help me cure another.'"
On page 78 he quotes the following also from "Richard Third," IV. 2:—
"Uncertain way of gain! But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin."
The student will surmise that phrases of Seneca can be traced through much of English tragedy, and that a careful reader is likely to have little difficulty in bringing together passages inspired by the Roman tragedies.
A full comparative study of the structural form of the Senecan and of the early English regular drama will be found in Rudolf Fischer's "Kunstentwicklung der Englische Tragödie." Symonds in his "Shakespeare's Predecessors," and Klein in his "Geschichte des Dramas," also touch on the debt of the modern drama to the Roman tragedies.
In the translations that follow, I have endeavored without doing violence to English idioms to give a strictly literal translation of the Latin originals, using as my text the edition of F. Leo. I wish to express my indebtedness to Prof. Albert S. Cook, and to Drs. Elisabeth Woodbridge and M. Anstice Harris, for criticism of the translation, not only with reference to its fidelity to the original, but also with regard to its English dress.