Classical and Early Modern Tragedy: Comparative Approaches and New Perspectives

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics and the translation of Greek and Latin comedies and tragedies into the Italian vernacular brought about the birth of modern theatre at the hands of Renaissance scholars and members of the learned academies. Not only did these writers reinvent the ancients in the context of the particular demands of their own age and their own audiences’ expectations, but they also contended with questions of performance and public reception, often engaging critically with contemporary politics.

‘Who could put Seneca’s buskins on Homer?’ asks William Gager in the epilogue to his own Ulysses Redux, a neo-Latin tragicomedy which formed part of a trilogy of Shrovetide performance at Christ Church, Oxford in 1592. After the event, and as a result of the ‘anti-drama’ controversy with John Rainolds, Gager himself marketed this play – and academic drama more generally – as chiefly about moral edification: and the drama, with its strong central emphasis on the theme of fidelity, apparently offers us a typically ‘Renaissance’ Ulysses stripped of his scheming amorality.

Translations of Greek tragedies into vernaculars have been well studied, but Latin translations of them have not, so far, gained the attention they deserve. Classicists are well-positioned to study them and thus contribute to a better knowledge of the development of Early Modern tragedy. Latin translations of tragedy represent an important stage in the reception of Greek drama and also play a major role in the definition of modern tragedy (as their paratexts show).

Since the rediscovery and revival of Ancient Tragedy in the Renaissance the concept of the tragic has played a crucial role both for the interpretation of ancient tragedies and the production of modern pieces. Both endeavors have been influenced by the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics – and have been greatly led astray, as research has fully acknowledged only in recent times (Lurje 2004). The high tide of the concept of the tragic was German Idealism and Romanticism which on its turn also creatively adopted ancient tragedy rather than grasping its core features.