“English Seneca”: Vernacular Rhyme and Classical Style in Early Modern English Drama

In a new Future of the Humanities Project event series — Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference — we embrace the other at a time when we have heard much about the ways in which national, religious, and cultural lines divide us as humans. In this series, we invite leading scholars across disciplines to explore themes of cultural encounters both in classic literary works and in contemporary cultural debates.

The cultural encounter addressed in this talk by Molly Clark is between the ancient and the medieval, the classical and the vernacular, specifically, the style of the Roman playwright Seneca and the vernacular style of English drama in the early modern period. English drama of the mid-sixteenth century tended to be written in continuous rhyme. It was also, however, increasingly influenced by the non-rhyming drama of classical playwrights, and Seneca in particular. In 1581, a group of authors published their translations of Seneca’s plays, which were generally faithful to the spirit and style of the originals, apart from one striking feature: they were entirely in rhyme. In this talk, Molly Clark will consider how rhyme as a particularly Gothic, particularly English device was simultaneously pitted against and conversant with the Senecan approach in the drama that was written in the wake of these translations. Clark will also argue that early modern English drama can be Senecan even in this most anti-classical feature of its style—and that the encounter between these two very different cultural predecessors made early modern English drama what it is.

This event is sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project and Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. It is part of the year-long series, Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference.

Online. Free and open to all. Registration is required.

Participants

Molly Clark completed her doctor of philosophy at Merton College, Oxford, where she wrote on rhyme in Shakespeare’s theatre. Her articles have been published in Studies in Philology, RES, Shakespeare, and Shakespeare Survey, and she also reviews early modern scholarship for the Times Literary Supplement. She has a chapter in Christian Shakespeare: Question Mark (2022), a monograph which resulted from a previous series of talks from the Future for the Humanities Project. Alongside her research, she works part-time as a refugee and asylum seeker caseworker for a charity in east London.

Michael Scott, Ph.D. (moderator), is senior dean, fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, college advisor for postgraduate students, and a member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior advisor to the president of Georgetown University. Scott previously served as the pro-vice-chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice-chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University, where he is professor emeritus.

 

Further events in the series:

12 February:  Professor Michael Collins, Georgetown University – James Joyce, ‘The Dead’

26 February: Professor Alexa Alice Joubin, George Washington University, DC – ‘Worldwide Encounters with Shakespeare’

Contact:
Las Casas Institute with Georgetown University
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk