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Crossing the Stages:
The Production, Performance and Reception of Ancient Theater
John G. Fitch
Department of Greek and Roman Studies
University of Victoria
Playing Seneca?
The notion that Seneca did not intend his plays to be performed was first
propounded in the early nineteenth century. As Dana Sutton has noted, it
was initially not so much an academic thesis as an "expression of taste,"
a reaction against the non-realistic conventions of Senecan drama. The
notion gradually acquired a prosopon of academic arguments, displayed most
notably in O. Zwierlein's Die Rezitationsdramen Senecas (1966). But as
B. Walker pointed out in her review, Zwierlein continued to rely on overly
restrictive criteria of what can and cannot be performed on stage. A series
of critics have argued, in fact, that there is nothing in the text of the
tragedies which would justify placing them in a separate category from stage
drama: such critics include, in addition to Walker, William M. Calder III,
L. Braune, and Dana F. Sutton in his monograph Seneca on the Stage (1986).
This paper will summarize l'état de la question, and will ask what lines of
research might prove fruitful in the future. In particular, it will examine
some of those passages in Seneca's dramas which seem prima facie to demand
performance, such as Herc. 987-1026 and Thy. 1003-05. The question will be
raised why such passages are relatively infrequent, and whether they can be
taken as evidence of Seneca's intentions for the plays as a whole.
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