Chapter I: Roman Plays in the Sixteenth Century (1)

Plays that dealt with the History of Rome were frequent on the Elizabethan stage, and all portions of it were laid under contribution. Subjects were taken from legends of the dawn like the story of Lucretia, and from rumours of the dusk like the story of Lucina; from Roman pictures of barbarian allies like Massinissa in the South, or barbarian antagonists like Caractacus in the North; as well as from the intimate records of home affairs and the careers of the great magnates of the Republic or Empire. But these plays belong more distinctively to the Stuart than to the Tudor section of the period loosely named after Elizabeth, and few have survived that were composed before the beginning of the seventeenth century. For long the Historical Drama treated by preference the traditions and annals of the island realm, and only by degrees did “the matter of Britain” yield its pride of place to “the matter of Rome the Grand.” Moreover, the earlier Roman Histories are of very inferior importance, and none of them reaches even a moderate standard of merit till the production of Shakespeare’s _Julius Caesar_ in 1600 or 1601. In this department Shakespeare had not the light to guide him that he found for his English Histories in Marlowe’s _Edward II._, or even in such plays as _The Famous Victories of Henry V._ The extant pieces that precede his first experiment, seem only to be groping their way, and it is fair to suppose that the others which have been lost did no better. Their interest, in so far as they have any interest at all, lies in the light they throw on the gradual progress of dramatic art in this domain. And they illustrate it pretty fully, and show it passing through some of the main general phases that may be traced in the evolution of the Elizabethan Tragedy as a whole. At the outset we have one specimen of the Roman play in which the legitimate drama is just beginning to disengage itself from the old Morality, and another in which the unique Senecan exemplar is transformed rather than translated to suit the primitive art of the time. Then we have several more artistic specimens deriving directly or indirectly from the French imitators of Seneca, which were the most dignified and intelligent the sixteenth century had to show. And lastly we have a specimen of what the Roman play became when elaborated by the scholar-playwrights for the requirements of the popular London stage.

A survey of these will show how far the ground was prepared for Shakespeare by the traditions of this branch of the drama when he turned to cultivate it himself.

1. APPIUS AND VIRGINIA. THE TRANSLATION OF OCTAVIA

The crudest if not the earliest of the series is entitled _A new Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia_, by R. B., initials which have been supposed with some probability to stand for Richard Bower, who was master of the Chapel Royal at Windsor in 1559. It was first printed in 1575, but must have been written some years before. A phrase it contains, “perhaps a number will die of the sweat,” has been thought to refer to the prevalence of the plague in 1563, and it may be identified with a play on the same subject that was acted at that time by the boys of Westminster. At any rate several expressions show beyond doubt that it was meant for representation, but only on the old-fashioned scaffold which was soon to be out-of-date. Its character and scope belong too, in part, to a bygone age. The prologue proclaims its ethical intention with the utmost emphasis:

You lordings all that present be, this Tragidie to heare
Note well what zeale and loue heerein doth well appeare,
And, Ladies, you that linked are in wedlocke bandes for euer
Do imitate the life you see, whose fame will perish neuer:
But Uirgins you, oh Ladies fair, for honour of your name
Doo lead the life apparent heere to win immortall fame.[1]

It is written in commendation of chastity and rebuke of vice:

Let not the blinded God of Loue, as poets tearm him so,
Nor Venus with her venery, nor Lechors, cause of wo,
Your Uirgins name to spot or file: deare dames, obserue the life
That faire Verginia did obserue, who rather wish(ed) the knife
Of fathers hand hir life to ende, then spot her chastety.
As she did waile, waile you her want, you maids, of courtesie.
If any by example heere would shun that great anoy,[2]
Our Authour would rejoyce in hart, and we would leap for joy.

[1] Quotations taken, with a few obvious emendations, from Mr. Farmer’s reproduction in the Tudor Facsimile Texts.

[2] The hurt of impurity, not of death.

No Moral Play could be more explicit in its lesson, and the Moral Play has also suggested a large number of the personages. Conscience, Justice, Rumour, Comfort, Reward, Doctrine, Memory, are introduced, and some of them not only in scenes by themselves, but in association with the concrete characters. Occasionally their functions are merely figurative, and can be separated from the action that is supposed to be proceeding: and then of course they hardly count for more than the attributes that help to explain a statue. Thus, when Appius resolves to pursue his ruthless purpose, he exclaims:

But out, I am wounded: how am I deuided!
Two states of my life from me are now glided:

and the quaint stage direction in the margin gives the comment: “Here let him make as thogh he went out, and let Consience and Justice come out of[3] him, and let Consience hold in his hande a Lamp burning, and let Justice haue a sworde and hold it before Apius brest.” Thus, too, another stage direction runs: “Here let Consience speake within:

‘Judge Apius, prince, oh stay, refuse: be ruled by thy friende:
What bloudy death with open shame did Torquin gaine in ende?’”

[3] Altered unnecessarily to _out after_ by Mr. Carew Hazlitt in his edition of Dodsley’s _Old English Plays_. Appius’ words imply that the two principles pass from his life, and the spectators are asked to imagine that they actually see the process.

And he answers: “Whence doth this pinching sounde desende?” Here clearly it is merely the voice of his own feelings objectified: and in both instances the interference of the Abstractions is almost wholly decorative; they add nothing to the reflections of Appius, but only serve to emphasise them. This however is not always the case. They often comport themselves in every respect like the real men and women. Comfort stays Virginius from suicide till he shall see the punishment of the wicked. Justice and Reward (that is, Requital) summoned by the unjust judge to doom the father, pronounce sentence on himself. In the end Virginius enters in company with Fame, Doctrina, and Memory.

Other of the characters, again, if more than general ideas, are less than definite individuals. There is a sub-plot not at all interwoven with the main plot, in which the class types, Mansipulus, Mansipula, and their crony, Subservus, play their parts. With their help some attempt is made at presenting the humours of vulgar life. They quarrel with each other, but are presently reconciled in order to divert themselves together, and put off the business of their master and mistress, hoping to escape the punishment for their negligence by trickery and good luck. But we do not even know who their master and mistress are, and they come into no contact with either the historical or the allegorical figures.

The only personage who finds his way into both compartments of the “Tragicall Comedie” is Haphazard the Vice, who gives the story such unity as it possesses. His name happily describes the double aspect of his nature. On the one hand he stands for chance itself; on the other for dependence on chance, the recklessness that relies on accident, and trusts that all will end well though guilt has been incurred. In this way he is both the chief seducer and the chief agent, alike of the petty rogues and of the grand criminal. To the former he sings:

Then wend ye on and folow me, Mansipulus,[4] Mansipula,
Let croping cares be cast away; come folow me, come folow me:
Subseruus is a joly loute
Brace[5] Haphazard, bould blinde bayarde![6]
A figge for his uncourtesie that seekes to shun good company!

[4] Text, _Mansipula_.

[5] Altered by Hazlitt to “brave.” It probably means “embrace.”

[6] A horse that does not see where it is going.

To Appius’ request for advice he replies:

Well, then, this is my counsell, thus standeth the case,
Perhaps such a fetche as may please your grace:
There is no more wayes but _hap_ or _hap not_,
Either hap or els hapless, to knit up the knot:
And if you will hazard to venter what falles,
Perhaps that Haphazard will end all your thralles.

His distinctive note is this, that he tempts men by suggesting that they may offend and escape the consequences. In the end he falls into the pit that he has digged for others, and when his hap is to be hanged, like a true Vice he accepts the _contretemps_ with jest and jape.

Yet despite the stock-in-trade that it takes over from Morality or Interlude, _Appius and Virginia_ has specialties of its own that were better calculated to secure it custom in the period of the Renaissance. The author bestows most care on the main story, and makes a genuine attempt to bring out the human interest of the subject and the persons. In the opening scene he tries, in his well-meaning way, to give the impression of a home in which affection is the pervading principle, but in which affection itself is not allowed to run riot, but is restrained by prudence and obligation. Father, mother, and daughter sing a ditty in illustration of this sober love or its reverse, and always return to the refrain:

The trustiest treasure in earth, as we see,
Is man, wife, and children in one to agree;
Then friendly, and kindly, let measure be mixed
With reason in season, where friendship is fixed.

There is some inarticulate feeling for effect in the contrast between the wholesomeness of this orderly family life and the incontinence of the tyrant who presently seeks to violate it. And the dramatic bent of the author—for it is no more than a bent—appears too in the portraiture of the parties concerned. The mingled perplexity and dread of Virginius, when in his consciousness of right he is summoned to the court, are justly conceived; and there is magnanimity in his answer to Appius’ announcement that he must give judgment “as justice doth require”:

My lord, and reason good it is: your seruaunt doth request
No parciall hand to aide his cause, no parciall minde or brest.
If ought I haue offended you, your Courte or eke your Crowne,
From lofty top of Turret hie persupetat me downe:
If treason none by me be done, or any fault committed,
Let my accusers beare the blame, and let me be remitted.

Similarly, the subsequent conflict in his heart between fondness for his daughter and respect for her and himself is clearly expressed. And her high-spirited demand for death is tempered and humanised by her instinctive recoil when he “proffers a blow”:

The gods forgeue thee, father deare! farewell: thy blow do bend—
Yet stay a whyle, O father deare, for fleash to death is fraile.
Let first my wimple bind my eyes, and then thy blow assaile,
Nowe, father, worke thy will on me, that life I may injoy.

But the most ambitious and perhaps the most successful delineation is that of Appius. At the outset he is represented as overwhelmed by his sudden yearning. Apelles, he thinks, was a “prattling fool” to boast of his statue; Pygmalion was fond “with raving fits” to run mad for the beauty of his work, for he could make none like Virginia. Will not the Gods treat him as they treated Salmacis, when Hermophroditus, bathing in the Carian fountain near the Lycian Marches, denied her suit?

Oh Gods aboue, bend downe to heare my crie
As once ye[7] did to Salmasis, in Pond hard Lyzia by:
Oh that Virginia were in case as somtime Salmasis,
And in Hermofroditus stede my selfe might seeke my blisse!
Ah Gods! would I unfold her armes complecting of my necke?
Or would I hurt her nimble hand, or yeelde her such a checke?
Would I gainsay hir tender skinne to baath where I do washe?
Or els refuse her soft sweete lippes to touch my naked fleshe?
Nay! Oh the Gods do know my minde, I rather would requier
To sue, to serue, to crouch, to kneele, to craue for my desier.
But out, ye Gods, ye bend your browes, and frowne to see me fare;
Ye do not force[8] my fickle fate, ye do not way my care.
Unrighteous and unequall Gods, unjust and eke unsure,
Woe worth the time ye made me liue, to see this haplesse houre.

This, we may suppose, is intended for a mad outbreak of voluptuous passion, “the nympholepsy of some fond despair”; and, as such, it is not very much worse than some that have won the applause of more critical ages. It may suggest the style of the Interlude in the _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, or more forcibly, the “_King Cambyses’_ vein” that was then in vogue (for Preston’s play of that name, published about a couple of years later than the probable date when this was performed, is in every way the nearest analogue to _Appius and Virginia_ that the history of our stage has to offer). But in comparison with the normal flow of the Moralities, the lines have undoubtedly a certain urgency and glow. And there are other touches that betray the incipient playwright. Appius is not exhibited as a mere monster; through all his life his walk has been blameless, and he is well aware of his “grounded years,” his reputation as judge, and the value of good report. He is not at ease in the course he now adopts; there is a division in his nature, and he does not yield to his temptation without forebodings and remorse.

Consience he pricketh me contempnèd,
And Justice saith, Judgement wold haue me condemned:
Consience saith, crueltye sure will detest me;[9]
And Justice saith, death in thend will molest me:
And both in one sodden, me thinkes they do crie
That fier eternall my soule shall destroy.

[7] In original, _he_.

[8] Heed.

[9] Make me detestable.

But he always comes back to the supreme fact of his longing for Virginia:

By hir I liue, by hir I die, for hir I joy or woe,
For hir my soule doth sinke or swimme, for her, I swere, I goe.

And there are the potentialities of a really powerful effect in the transition from his jubilant outburst when he thinks his waiting is at an end:

O lucky light! lo, present heere hir father doth appeare,

to his misgivings when he sees the old man is unaccompanied:

O, how I joy! Yet bragge thou not. Dame Beuty bides behinde.

And immediately thereafter the severed head is displayed to his view.

Nor was R. B., whether or not he was Richard Bower, Master of the Chapel children, quite without equipment for the treatment of a classical theme, though in this respect as in others his procedure is uncertain and fumbling in the highest degree. The typical personages of the under-plot have no relish of Latinity save in the termination of the labels that serve them as names, and they swear by God’s Mother, and talk glibly of church and pews and prayer books, and a “pair of new cards.” Even in the better accredited Romans of Livy’s story there are anachronisms and incongruities. Appius, though ordinarily a judge, speaks of himself as prince, king or kaiser; and references are made to his crown and realm. Nevertheless the author is not without the velleities of Humanism. He ushers in his prologue with some atrocious Latin Elegiacs, which the opening lines of the English are obliging enough to paraphrase:

Qui cupis aethereas et summas scandere sedes,
Vim simul ac fraudem discute, care, tibi.
Fraus hic nulla juvat, non fortia facta juvabunt:
Sola Dei tua te trahet tersa fides.
Cui placet in terris, intactae paludis[10] instar,
Vivere Virginiam nitere, Virgo, sequi:
Quos tulit et luctus, discas et gaudia magna,
Vitae dum parcae scindere fila parant.
Huc ades, O Virgo pariter moritura, sepulchro;
Sic ait, et facies pallida morte mutat.

Who doth desire the trump of fame to sound unto the skies,
Or els who seekes the holy place where mighty Joue he lies,
He must not by deceitfull mind, nor yet by puissant strength,
But by the faith and sacred lyfe he must it win at length;
And what[11] she be that virgins lyfe on earth wold gladly leade,
The fluds that Virginia did fall[12] I wish her reade,
Her doller and hir doleful losse and yet her joyes at death:
“Come, Virgins pure, to graue with me,” quoth she with latest breath.

[10] Professor Butler, to whom I am indebted for other emendations of the passage, which is very corrupt in the printed text, suggests _Palladis_, which gives a meaning, _the Virgin goddess_, and saves the metre. But I am not sure that R. B. had any bigoted objection to false quantities.

[11] _I.e._ “whoever.”

[12] Fall, causative; “the tears she copiously shed.”

In the same way there is throughout a lavish display of cheap boyish erudition. Thus Virginius, reckoning up his services to Appius, soliloquises:

In Mars his games, in marshall feates, thou wast his only aide,
The huge Carrebd his[13] hazards thou for him hast[14] ofte assaied.
Was Sillas force by thee oft shunde or yet Lady Circe’s[15] lande,
Pasiphae’s[16] childe, that Minnotaur, did cause thee euer stande?

[13] Charybdis.

[14] Original, _was_.

[15] So Hazlitt; in the original _Adrice_.

[16] In the original, _Lacefaer_.

We are here indeed on the threshold of a very different kind of art, of which, in its application to Roman history, a sample had been submitted to the English public two years previously in the _Octavia_ ascribed to Seneca.

The Latin Tragedy, merely because it was Latin, and for that reason within the reach of a far greater number of readers, was much better known than the Greek at the period of the Renaissance. But apart from its advantage in accessibility, it attracted men of that age not only by its many brilliant qualities but by its very defects, its tendency to heightened yet abstract portraiture, its declamation, its sententiousness, its violence, its unrestfulness. It had both for good and bad a more modern bearing than the masterpieces of Hellenic antiquity, and in some ways it corresponded more closely with the culture of the sixteenth century than with our own. It was therefore bound to have a very decisive influence in shaping the traditions of the later stage; and the collection of ten plays ascribed to Seneca, the poor remainder of a numerous tribe that may be traced back to the third century before Christ, furnished the pattern which critics prescribed for imitation to all who would achieve the tragic crown. And if this was true of the series as a whole, it was also true of the play, which, whatever may be said of the other nine, is certainly not by Seneca himself, the poorest of them all, with most of the faults and few of the virtues of the rest, _Octavia_, the sole surviving example of the _Fabula Praetexta_, or the Tragedy that dealt with native Roman themes. The _Octavia_, however, was not less popular and influential than its companions, and has even a claim to especial attention inasmuch as it may be considered the remote ancestress of the Modern Historic Play in general and of the Modern Roman Play in particular. It inspired Mussato about 1300 to write in Latin his _Eccerinis_, which deals with an almost contemporary national subject, the fate of Ezzelino: it inspired the young Muretus about 1544 to write his _Julius Caesar_, which in turn showed his countrymen the way to treat such themes in French. Before eight years were over they had begun to do so, and many were the Roman plays composed by the School of Ronsard. Certainly Seneca’s method would suit the historical dramatist who was not quite at home in his history, for of local colour and visual detail it made small account, and indeed was hardly compatible with them. And it would commend itself no less to men of letters who, without much dramatic sympathy or aptitude, with no knowledge of stage requirements, and little prospect of getting their pieces performed, felt called upon _honoris causâ_ to write dramas, which one of the most distinguished and successful among them was candid enough to entitle not plays but treatises. It is worth while to have a clear idea of the _Octavia_ from which in right line this illustrious and forgotten progeny proceeded.

The date of the action is supposed to be 62 A.D. when Nero, who had for some time wished to wed his mistress, Poppaea Sabina, and had murdered his mother, partly on account of her opposition, divorced his virtuous wife, his step-sister Octavia, and exiled her to Pandataria, where shortly afterwards he had her put to death. The fact that Seneca is one of the persons in the piece, and that there are anticipatory references to Nero’s death, which followed Seneca’s compulsory suicide only after an interval of three years, sufficiently disposes of the theory that the philosopher himself was the author.

The text accepted in the sixteenth century suffered much, not only from the corruption of individual expressions, but from the displacement of entire passages. Greatly to its advantage it has been rearranged by later editors, but in the following account, their conjectures, generally happy and sometimes convincing, have been disregarded, as they were unknown to Thomas Nuce, who rendered it into English in 1561. In his hands, therefore, it is more loosely connected than it originally was, or than once more it has become for us; and something of regularity it forfeits as well, for the dislocated framework led him to regard it as a drama in only four acts. Despite these flaws in his work he is a cleverer craftsman than many of his colleagues in Senecan translation, whose versions of the ten tragedies, most of them already published separately, were collected in a neat little volume in 1851.[17]

[17] It is from this that I quote. I have not been able to see either the first edition or the reprint for the Spenser Society.

An original “argument” summarises the story with sufficient clearness.

Octauia, daughter to prince Claudius grace,
To Nero espousd, whom Claudius did adopt,
(Although Syllanus first in husbandes place
Shee had receiu’d, whom she for Nero chopt[18]),
Her parentes both, her Make that should have bene,
Her husbandes present Tiranny much more,
Her owne estate, her case that she was in,
Her brother’s death, (pore wretch), lamenteth sore.
Him Seneca doth persuade, his latter loue,
Dame Poppie, Crispyne’s wife that sometime was,
And eake Octauias maide, for to remoue.
For Senecks counsel he doth lightly passe[19]
But Poppie ioynes to him in marriage rites.
The people wood[20] unto his pallace runne,
His golden fourmed shapes[21]; which them sore spytes,
They pull to ground: this uprore, now begunne,
To quench, he some to griesly death doth send.
But her close cased up in dreadful barge,
With her unto Compania coast to wend
A band of armed men, he gave in charge.

This programme the play proceeds to fill in.

In the first act Octavia, unbosoming herself to her nurse, relieves her heart of its woe and horror. She recounts the misfortunes of her house, the atrocities of her lord, his infidelities to her, her detestation of him. The nurse is full of sympathy, but admonishes her to patience, consoling her with assurances of the people’s love, and reminding her of the truancies that the Empress of Heaven had also to excuse in her own husband and brother:

Now, madam, sith on earth your powre is pight
And haue on earth Queene Junos princely place,
And sister are and wyfe to Neroes grace,
Your wondrous restles dolours great appease.[22]

[18] Exchanged.

[19] Has small consideration.

[20] Mad.

[21] Statues.

[22]
Tu quoque terris altera Juno
Soror Augusti
coniunxque graves vince dolores. (Line 224, ed. Peiper & Richter).

This is now assigned to the chorus.

The chorus closes the act with a variation on the same themes, passing from praises of Octavia’s purity and regrets for the ancient Roman intolerance of wrong, to the contrasted picture of Nero’s unchallenged malignity.

The second act commences with a monologue by Seneca on the growing corruption of the age, which is interrupted by the approach of his master in talk with the Prefect. His words, as he enters, are:

Dispatch with speede that we commaunded haue:
Go, send forthwith some one or other slaue,
That Plautius cropped scalpe, and Sillas eke,
May bring before our face: goe some man seeke.[23]

Seneca remonstrates, but his remonstrances are of no avail; and in a long discussion in which he advocates a policy of righteousness and goodwill and the sacredness of Octavia’s claims, he is equally unsuccessful. The act, to which there is no chorus, concludes with Nero’s determination to flout the wishes of the people and persist in the promotion of Poppaea:

Why do we not appoynt the morrow next
When as our mariage pompe may be context?[24]

The third act is ushered in with one of those boding apparitions of which the Senecan Tragedy is so fond. The shade of Agrippina rises, the bridal torch of Nero and Poppaea in her hand:

Through paunch of riuened earth, from Plutoes raigne
With ghostly steps I am returnd agayne,
In writhled wristes, that bloud do most desyre,
Forguyding[25] wedlocke vyle with Stygian fire.[26]

[23]
Perage imperata: mitte qui Plauti mihi
Sillaeque caesi referat abscissum caput. (Line 449.)

[24]
Quin destinamus proximum thalamis diem? (Line 604.)

[25] Guiding to ruin.

[26]
Tellure rupta Tartaro gressum extuli
stygiam cruenta praeferens dextra facem
thalamis scelestis. (Line 605.)

She bewails her crimes on her son’s behalf and his parricidal ingratitude, but vengeance will fall on him at last.

Although that Tyrant proude and scornful wight
His court with marble stone do strongly dyght,
And princelike garnish it with glistering golde:
Though troupes of soldiours, shielded sure, upholde
Their chieftaynes princely porch: and though yet still
The world drawne drye with taskes even to his will
Great heapes of riches yeeld, themselues to saue;
Although his bloudy helpe the Parthians craue,
And Kingdomes bring, and goods al that they haue;
The tyme and day shall come, when as he shall,
Forlorne, and quite undone, and wanting all,
Unto his cursed deedes his life, and more,
Unto his foes his bared throate restore.[27]

As she disappears, Octavia enters in conversation with the chorus, whom she dissuades from the expression of sympathy for her distress lest they should incur the wrath of the tyrant. On this suggestion they denounce the supineness of the degenerate Romans in the vindication of right, and exhort each other to an outbreak.

[27]
Licet extruat marmoribus atque auro tegat
superbus aulam, limen armatae ducis
servent cohortes, mittat immensas opes
exhaustus orbis, supplices dextram petant
Parthi cruentam, regna divitias ferant:
veniet dies tempusque quo reddat suis
animam nocentem sceleribus jugulum hostibus
desertus ac destructus et cunctis egens. (Line 636.)

In the fourth act, Poppaea, terrified by an ominous dream of Nero stabbing her first husband, and of Agrippina, a firebrand in her grasp, leading her down through the earth, rushes across the stage, but is stayed by her nurse, who soothes and encourages her, and bids her return to her bridal chamber. Yet it seems as though her worst fears were at once to be realised. The chorus, acknowledging the charms of the new Empress, is interrupted by the hurried arrival of a messenger. He announces that the people are in uproar, overthrowing the statues of Poppaea, and demanding the restitution of Octavia. But to what purpose? The chorus sings that it is vain to oppose the resistless arms of love. It is at least vain to oppose the arms of Nero’s soldiers. Confident in their strength he enters, breathing forth threatenings and slaughter, and expectant of a time when he will exact a full penalty from the citizens:

Then shall their houses fall by force of fire;
What burning both, and buildings fayre decay,[28]
What beggarly want, and wayling hunger may,
Those villaines shall be sure to have ech day.[29]

Dreaming of the future conflagration, he is dissatisfied with the prefect, who tells him that the insurrection has been easily quelled with the death of one or two, and meanwhile turns all his wrath against the innocent cause of the riot. The play does not, however, end with the murder of Octavia. She informs the chorus that she is to be dispatched in Agrippina’s death-ship to her place of exile,

But now no helpe of death I feele,
Alas I see my Brothers boate:
This is the same, whose vaulted keele
His Mother once did set a flote.
And now his piteous Sister I,
Excluded cleane from spousall place
Shall be so caried by and by;[30]
No force hath virtue in this case.[31]

[28] Destruction of fair buildings.

[29]
Mox tecta flammis concidant urbis meis,
ignes ruinae noxium populum premant
turpisque egestas saeva cum luctu fames. (Line 847.)

[30] At once.

[31]
Sed iam spes est nulla salutis:
fratris cerno miseranda ratem,
hac en cuius vecta carina
quondam genetrix
nunc et thalamis expulsa soror
miseranda vehar. (Line 926.)

And the final song of the chorus, with a touch of dramatic irony, wishes her a prosperous voyage, and congratulates her on her removal from the cruel city of Rome:

O pippling puffe of western wynde,
Which sacrifice didst once withstand,
Of Iphigen to death assignde:
And close in Cloude congealed clad
Did cary hir from smoking aares[32]
Which angry, cruell Virgin had;
This Prince also opprest with cares
Saue from this paynefull punishment
To Dian’s temple safely borne:
The barbarous Moores, to rudenesse bent,
Then[33] Princes Courtes in Rome forlorne
Haue farre more Cyuile curtesie:
For there doth straungers death appease
The angry Gods in heauens on hie,
But Romayne bloude our Rome must please.[34]

[32] Altars.

[33] Than.

[34]
Lenes aurae zephyrique leves
tectam quondam nube aetheria
qui vixistis raptam saevae
virginis aris Iphigeniam,
hanc quoque tristi procul a poena
portate precor templa ad Triviae.
Urbe est nostra mitior Aulis
et Maurorum {note} barbara tellus;
hospitis illic caede litatur
numen superum,
civis gaudet Roma cruore. (Line 1002.)

{note} Better reading, Taurorum.

There could be no greater contrast than between _Appius and Virginia_, with its exits and entrances, its changefulness and bustle, its mixture of the pompous and the farcical; and the monotonous declamation, the dismissal of all action, the meagreness of the material in the _Octavia_. And yet they are more akin than they at first sight appear. Disregard the buffoonery which the mongrel “tragicall comedie” inherited from the native stock, and you perceive traits that suggest another filiation. The similarity with the Latin Play in its English version is, of course, misleading, except in so far as it shows how the Senecan drama must present itself to an early Elizabethan in the light of his own crude art. The devices of the rhetorician were travestied by those who knew no difference between rhetoric and rant, and whose very rant, whether they tried to invent or to translate, was clumsy and strained. Hence the “tenne tragedies” of Seneca and the nearly contemporary Mixed Plays have a strong family resemblance in style. In all of them save the _Octavia_ the resemblance extends from diction to verse, for in dialogue and harangue they employ the trailing fourteen-syllable measure of the popular play, while in the _Octavia_ this is discarded for the more artistic heroic couplet. In this and other respects, T. N., as Nuce signs himself, is undoubtedly more at his ease in the literary element than others of the group; nevertheless he is often content to fly the ordinary pitch of R. B. This is most obvious when their performances are read and compared as a whole, but it is evident enough in single passages. The Nurse, for example, says of Nero to Octavia:

Eft steppèd into servile Pallace stroke,
To filthy vices lore one easly broke,
Of Divelish wicked wit this Princocks proude,
By stepdames wyle prince Claudius Sonne auoude;
Whome deadly damme did bloudy match ylight,
And thee, against thy will, for feare did plight.[35]

[35] The original author has a right to complain:

Intravit hostis hei mihi captam domum
dolisque novercae principis factus gener
idemque natus iuvenis infandi ingeni
scelerum capacis dira cui genetrix facem
accendit et te iunxit invitam metu. (Line 155.)

These words might almost suit the mouths of Appius and his victims.

But leaving aside the affinities due to the common use of English by writers on much the same plane of art, the London medley is not immeasurably different from or inferior to the Roman _Praetexta_, even when confronted with the latter in its native dress. In both the characterisation is in the same rudimentary and obvious style, and shows the same predilection for easily classified types. There is even less genuine theatrical tact in the Latin than in the English drama. The chief persons are under careful supervision and are kept rigidly apart. Nero never meets Octavia or Poppaea, Poppaea and Octavia never meet each other. No doubt there are some successful touches: the first entrance of Nero is not ineffective; the equivocal hopefulness of the last chorus is a thing one remembers: the insertion of Agrippina’s prophecy and Poppaea’s dream does something to keep in view the future requital and so to alleviate the thickening gloom. Except for these, however, and a few other felicities natural to a writer with long dramatic traditions behind him, the _Octavia_ strikes us as a series of disquisitions and discussions, well-arranged, well-managed, often effective, sometimes brilliant, that have been suggested by a single impressive historical situation.

2. THE FRENCH SENECANS

These salient features are transmitted to the Senecan dramas of France, except that the characterisation is even vaguer, the declamation ampler, and the whole treatment less truly dramatic and more obviously rhetorical; of which there is an indication in the greater relative prominence of monologue as compared with dialogue, and in the excessive predilection for general reflections,[36] many of them derived from Seneca and Horace, but many of them too of modern origin.

[36] “Jodelle’s und Garnier’s Dramen sind reicher an Sentenzen als die Seneca’s, Jodelle hat mehr als doppelt so viel.” _Gedankenkreis ... in Jodelle’s und Garnier’s Tragödien_, by Paul Kahnt, who gives the results of his calculations in an interesting table.

At the head of the list stands the _Julius Caesar_ of Muretus, a play which, even if of far less intrinsic worth than can be claimed for it, would always be interesting for the associations with which it is surrounded.

Montaigne, after mentioning among his other tutors “Marc Antoine Muret,” que le France et l’Italie recognoist pour le meilleur orateur du temps, goes on to tell us: “J’ay soustenu les premiers personnages ez tragedies latines de Buchanan, de Guerente et de Muret, qui se representerent en nostre college de Guienne avecques dignité: en cela, Andreas Goveanus, nostre principal, comme en toutes aultres parties de sa charge, feut sans comparaison le plus grand principal de France; et m’en tenoit on maistre ouvrier.”

The _Julius Caesar_ written in 1544 belongs to the year before Montaigne left Bordeaux at the age of thirteen, so he may have taken one of the chief parts in it, Caesar, or M. Brutus, or Calpurnia. This would always give us a kind of personal concern in Muret’s short boyish composition of barely 600 lines, which he wrote at the age of eighteen and afterwards published only among his _Juvenilia_. But it has an importance of its own. Of course it is at the best an academic experiment, though from Montaigne’s statement that these plays were presented “avecques dignité,” and from the interest the principal took in the matter, we may suppose that the performance would be exemplary in its kind. Of course, too, even as an academic experiment it does not, to modern taste, seem on the level of the more elaborate tragedies which George Buchanan, “ce grand poëte ecossois,” as Montaigne reverently styles his old preceptor, had produced at the comparatively mature age of from thirty-three to thirty-six, ere leaving Bordeaux two years before. It is inferior to the _Baptistes_ and far inferior to the _Jephthes_ in precision of portraiture and pathos of appeal. But in the sixteenth century, partly, no doubt, because the subject was of such secular importance and the treatment so congenial to learned theory, but also, no doubt, because the eloquence was sometimes so genuinely eloquent, and the Latin, despite a few licenses in metre and grammar, so racy of the classic soil, it obtained extraordinary fame and exercised extraordinary influence. For these reasons, as well as the additional one that it is now less widely known than it ought to be, a brief account of it may not be out of place.

The first act is entirely occupied with a soliloquy by Caesar, in which he represents himself as having attained the summit of earthly glory.

Let others at their pleasure count their triumphs, and name
themselves from vanquished provinces. It is more to be
called Caesar: whoso seeks fresh titles elsewhere, takes
something away thereby. Would you have me reckon the regions
conquered under my command? Enumerate all there are.[37]

Even Rome has yielded to him, even his great son-in-law admitted his power,

and whom he would not have as an equal, he has borne as a
superior.[38]

[37]
Numerent triumphos, cum volent, alii suos,
Seque {note} subactis nominent provinciis.
Plus est vocari Caesarem; quisquis novos
Aliunde titulos quaerit, is jam detrahit:
Numerare ductu vis meo victas plagas?
Percurrito omnes.

{note} Insert _ex_.

[38]
quemque noluerat parem,
Tulit priorem.

What more is to be done?

My quest must be heaven, earth is become base to me....
Now long enough have I lived whether for myself or for my
country.... The destruction of foes, the gift of laws to
the people, the ordering of the year, the restoration of
splendour to worship, the settlement of the world,—than
these, greater things can be conceived by none, nor pettier
be performed by me.... When life has played the part
assigned to it, death never comes in haste and sometimes too
late.[39]

[39]
Coelum petendum est: terra jam vilet mihi....
Jam vel mihi, vel patriae vixi satis....
Hostes perempti, civibus leges datae,
Digestus annus, redditus sacris nitor,
Compostus orbis, cogitari nec queunt
Majora cuiquam, nec minora a me geri....
Cum vita partes muneris functa est sui,
Mors propera nunquam, sera nonnunquam venit.

The chorus sings of the immutability of fortune.

In the second act Brutus, in a long monologue, upbraids himself with his delay.

Does the virtue of thy house move thee nought, and nought
the name of Brutus? Nought, the hard lot of thy groaning
country, crushed by the tyrant and calling for thine aid?
Nought the petitions in which the people lament that Brutus
comes not to champion the state? If these things fail to
touch thee, thy wife now gives thee rede enough that thou
be a man; who has pledged her faith to thee in blood, thus
avouching herself the offspring of thine uncle.[40]

[40]
Nihilne te virtus tuorum commovet,
Nomenque Bruti? nihil {note} gementis patriae,
Pressae a tyranno, opemque poscentis tuam
Conditio dura? nil libelli supplices,
Queis Brutum abesse civitatis vindicem
Cives queruntur? Haec parum si te movent,
Tua jam, vir ut sis, te satis conjux monet,
Fidem cruore quae tibi obstrinxit suam.
Testata sic se avunculi prolem tui.

{note} Certainly read _nil_.

He raises and meets the objections which his understanding offers:

Say you he is not king but dictator? If the thing be
the same, what boots a different name? Say you he shuns
that name, and rejects the crowns they proffer him: this
is pretence and mockery, for why then did he remove the
tribunes? True, he gave me dignities and once my life; with
me my country outweighs them all. Whoso shows gratitude to
a tyrant against his country’s interest, is ingrate while he
seeks to be stupidly grateful.[41]

And his conclusion is

The sun reawakening to life saw the people under the yoke, and
slaves: at his setting may he see them free.[42]

To him enters Cassius exultant that the day has arrived, impatient for the decisive moment, scarce able to restrain his eagerness. Only one scruple remains to him; should Antony be slain along with his master? Brutus answers:

Often already have I said that my purpose is this,
to destroy tyranny but save the citizens.
_Cass._ Then let it be destroyed from its deepest roots, lest if
only cut down, it sprout again at some time hereafter.
_Brut._ The whole root lurks under a single trunk.
_Cass._ Think’st thou so? I shall say no more. Thy will
be done: we all follow thy guidance.[43]

[41]
At vero non rex iste, sed dictator est.
Dum res sit una, quid aliud nomen juvat?
At nomen illud refugit, et oblatas sibi
Rejicit coronas. Fingere hoc et ludere est.
Nam cur Tribunos igitur amovit loco?
At mihi et honores et semel vitam dedit.
Plus patria illis omnibus apud me potest.
Qui se tyranno in patriam gratum exhibet,
Dum vult inepte gratus esse, ingratus est.

[42]
Phoebus renascens subditos cives jugo,
Servosque vidit: liberos videat cadens.

[43]
Jam saepe dixi, id esse consilium mihi,
Salvis perimere civibus tyrannida.
_Cass._ Perimatur ergo ab infimis radicibus,
Ne quando posthac caesa rursum pullulet.
_Bru._ Latet sub uno tota radix corpore.
_Cass._ Itan’ videtur? amplius nil proloquar.
Tibi pareatur; te sequimur omnes ducem.

The chorus sings the glories of those who, like Harmodius with his “amiculus,” destroy the tyrants, and the risks these tyrants run.

In the third act Calpurnia, flying in panic to her chamber, is met by her nurse, to whom she discloses the cause of her distress. She has dreamed that Caesar lies dead in her arms covered with blood, and stabbed with many wounds. The nurse points out the vanity of dreams and the unlikelihood of any attempt against one so great and beneficent, whose clemency has changed even foes to friends. Calpurnia, only half comforted, rejoins that she will at least beseech him to remain at home that day, and the chorus prays that misfortune may be averted.

In the fourth act Calpurnia tries her powers of persuasion. To her passionate appeal, her husband answers:

What? Dost thou ask me to trust thy dreams?
_Cal._ No; but to concede something to my fear.
_Caes._ But that fear of thine rests on dreams alone.
_Cal._ Assume it to be vain; grant something to thy wife.[44]

She goes on to enumerate the warning portents, and at length Caesar assents to her prayers since she cannot repress her terrors. But here Decimus Brutus strikes in:

High-hearted Caesar, what word has slipped from thee?[45]

He bids him remember his glory:

O most shameful plight if the world is ruled by Caesar and
Caesar by a woman.... What, Caesar, dost thou suppose the
Fathers will think if thou bidst them, summoned at thy
command, to depart now and to return when better dreams
present themselves to Calpurnia. Go rather resolutely and
assume a name the Parthians must dread: or if this please
thee not, at least go forth, and thyself dismiss the
Fathers; let them not think they are slighted and had in
derision.[46]

[44]
Quid? Somniis me credere tuis postulas?
_Cal._ Non: sed timori ut non nihil tribuas meo.
_Caes._ At iste solis nititur somniis timor.
_Cal._ Finge esse vanum: tribuito aliquid conjugi.

[45]
Magnanime Caesar, quod tibi verbum excidit?

[46]
O statum deterrimum,
Si Caesar orbem, Caesarem mulier regit!...
Quid, Caesar, animi patribus credis fore,
Si te jubente convocatos jusseris
Abire nunc, redire, cum Calpurniae
Meliora sese objecerint insomnia?
Vade potius constanter, et nomen cape
Parthis timendum; aut, hoc minus si te juvat,
Prodito saltem, atque ipse patres mittito:
Ne negligi se, aut ludibrio haberi putent.

Caesar is bent one way by pity for his wife, another by fear of these taunts; but, at last, leaving Calpurnia to her misgivings, he exclaims:

But yet, since even to fall, so it be but once, is better
than to be laden with lasting fear; not if three hundred
prophet-voices call me back, not if with his own voice the
present Deity himself warn me of the peril and urge my
staying here, shall I refrain.[47]

The chorus cites the predictions of Cassandra to show that it would sometimes be wise to follow the counsel of women.

In the fifth act Brutus and Cassius appear in triumph.

_Brut._ Breathe, citizens; Caesar is slain!... In the Senate
which he erewhile overbore, he lies overborne.
_Cass._ Behold, Rome, the sword yet warm with blood, behold
the hand that hath championed thine honour. That
loathsome one who in impious frenzy and blind rage
had troubled thee and thine, sore wounded by this same
hand, by this same sword which thou beholdest, and
gashed in every limb, hath spewed forth his life in
a flood of gore.[48]

[47]
Sed tamen quando semel
Vel cadere praestat, quam metu longo premi;
Non si tracentis vocibus vatum avocer,
Non si ipse voce propria praesens Deus
Moneat pericli, atque hic manendum suadeat,
Me continebo.

[48]
_Brut._ Spirate cives! Caesar interfectus est....
In curia, quam oppresserat, oppressus jacet.
_Cass._ En, Roma, gladium adhuc tepentem sanguine;
En dignitatis vindicem dextram tuae.
Impurus ille, qui furore nefario,
Rabieque caeca, te et tuos vexaverat,
Hac, hac manu, atque hoc, hocce gladio, quem vides,
Consauciatus, et omnibus membris lacer
Undam cruoris, et animum evomuit simul.

As they leave, Calpurnia enters bewailing the truth of her dream, and inviting to share in her laments the chorus, which denounces vengeance on the criminals. Then the voice of Caesar is heard in rebuke of their tears and in comfort of their distress. Only his shadow fell, but he himself is joined to the immortals.

Weep no more: it is the wretched that tears befit. Those
who assailed me with frantic mind—a god am I, and true is
my prophecy—shall not escape vengeance for their deed. My
sister’s grandson, heir of my virtue as of my sceptre, will
require the penalty as seems good to him.[49]

[49]
Desinite flere: lacrymae miseros decent.
Qui me furenti, (vera praemoneo Indiges)
Sunt animo adorti, non inultum illud ferent.
Heres meae virtutis, ut sceptri mei,
Nepos sororis, arbitratu pro suo
Poenos reposcet.

Calpurnia recognises the voice, and the chorus celebrates the bliss of the “somewhat” that is released from the prison house of the body.

It is interesting to note that Muretus already employs a number of the _motifs_ that reappear in Shakespeare. Thus he gives prominence to the self-conscious magnanimity of Caesar: to the temporary hesitation of Brutus, with his appeal to his name and the letters that are placed in his way; to his admiration for the courage and constancy of Portia; to his final whole-heartedness and disregard of Caesar’s love for him; to his prohibition of Mark Antony’s death; to Cassius’ vindictive zeal and eager solicitation of his friend; to Calpurnia’s dream, and the contest between her and Decimus Brutus and in Caesar’s own mind; to Caesar’s fatal decision in view of his honour, and his rejection of the fear of death; to the exultation of Brutus and Cassius as they enter with their blood-stained swords after the deed is done. And more noticeable than any of these details, are the divided admiration and divided sympathy the author bestows both on Brutus and Caesar—which are obvious even in the wavering utterances of the chorus. We are far removed from the times when Dante saw Lucifer devouring Brutus and Cassius in two of his mouths with Judas between them; or when Chaucer, making a composite monster of the pair, tells how “false Brutus-Cassius,”

“That ever hadde of his hye state envye,”

“stikede” Julius with “boydekins.” But we are equally far from the times when Marie-Joseph Chénier was to write his tragedy of _Brutus et Cassius, Les Derniers Romains_. At the renaissance the characteristic feeling was enthusiasm for Caesar and his assassin alike, though it was Shakespeare alone who knew how to reconcile the two points of view.[50]

Of the admiration which Muret’s little drama excited there is documentary proof. Prefixed to it are a number of congratulatory verses, and among the eulogists are not only scholars, like Buchanan,[51] but literary men, members of the Pléiade—Dorât, Baïf, and especially Jodelle, who has his complimentary conceits on the appropriateness of the author’s name, Mark Antony, to the feat he has accomplished.

[50] I am quite unable to agree with Herr Collischonn’s view that Muret’s play is more republican in sentiment than that of Grévin. In both there is some discrepancy and contradiction, but with Muret, Caesar is a more prominent figure than Brutus, taking part in three scenes, if we include his intervention after death, while Brutus appears only in two, and to my mind Caesar makes fully as sympathetic an impression. On the other hand, the alleged monarchic bias of Grévin’s work cannot be considered very pronounced, when, as M. Faguet mentions in his _Tragédie française au XVIͤ Siècle_, “it was reprinted in the time of Ravaillac with a preface violently hostile to the principle of monarchy.” But see Herr Collischonn’s excellent introduction to his _Grevin’s Tragödie “Caesar,” Ausgaben und Abhandlungen, etc., LII_.

[51] See Ruhnken’s edition of Muretus. For the text I have generally but not always used Collischonn’s reprint.

But this last testimony leads us to the less explicit but not less obvious indications of the influence exercised by Muret’s tragedy which appear in the subsequent story of literary production. This influence was both indirect and direct. The example of this modern Latin play could not but count for something when Jodelle took the further step of treating another Roman theme in the vernacular. In the vernacular, too, Grévin was inspired to rehandle the same theme as Muretus, obtaining from his predecessor most of his material and his apparatus. These experiments again were not without effect on the later dramas of Garnier, two of which were to leave a mark on English literature.

The first regular tragedy as well as the first Roman history in the French language was the _Cléopatre Captive_ of Jodelle, acted with great success in 1552 before Henry II. by Jodelle’s friends, who at the subsequent banquet presented to him, in semi-pagan wise, a goat decked with flowers and ivy. The prologue[52] to the King describes the contents.

“C’est une tragedie
Qui d’une voix plaintive et hardie
Te represente un Romain, Marc Antoine,
Et Cleopatre, Egyptienne royne,
Laquelle après qu’Antoine, son amy,
Estant desjà vaincu par l’ennemy,
Se fust tué, ja se sentant captive,
Et qu’on vouloit la porter toute vive
En un triomphe avecques ses deux femmes,
S’occit. Icy les desirs et les flammes
De deux amants: d’Octavian aussi
L’orgueil, l’audace et le journel soucy
De son trophée emprains tu sonderas.”

But this programme conveys an impression of greater variety and abundance than is justified by the piece. In point of fact it begins only after the death of Antony, who does not intervene save as a ghost in the opening scene, to bewail his offences and announce that in a dream he has bid Cleopatra join him before the day is out.[53] Nor do we hear anything of “desirs et flammes” on his part; rather he resents her seductions, and has summoned her to share his torments:

[52] _Ancien Théatre François_, Tome IV. ed Viollet Le Duc.

[53] As he puts it, rather comically to modern ears:

‘Avant que ce soleil qui vient ores de naistre,
Ayant tracé son jour, _chez sa tante se plonge_.’

Or se faisant compagne en ma peine et tristesse
Qui s’est faite longtemps compagne en ma liesse.

The sequel does little more than describe how his command is carried out. Cleopatra enters into conversation with Eras and Charmium, and despite their remonstrances resolves to obey. The chorus sings of the fickleness of fortune: (Act I.). Octavianus, after a passing regret for Antony, arranges with Proculeius and Agrippa to make sure of her presence at his triumph. The chorus sings of the perils of pride: (Act II.). Octavianus visits the Queen, dismisses her excuses, but grants mercy to her and her children, and pardons her deceit when her retention of her jewellery is exposed by Seleucus. But Seleucus is inconsolable for his offence as well as his castigation, and exclaims:

Lors que la royne, et triste et courageuse,
Devant Cesar aux chevaux m’a tiré,
Et de son poing mon visage empiré,
S’elle m’eust fait mort en terre gesir,
Elle eust preveu à mon present desir,
Veu que la mort n’eust point esté tant dure
Que l’eternelle et mordante pointure
Qui jà desjà jusques au fond me blesse
D’avoir blessé ma royne et ma maistresse.