“Seneca cannot be too heavy”: some thoughts on Seneca’s horror plays

Seneca (ca 4 BC – AD 65) was influenced by the ancient Greeks, and he himself influenced Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. For someone like me, he is unavoidable, so last month I read his Phaedra, and now read some more. 

The verdict? I love Shakespeare; I love the ancient Greeks; I don’t like Seneca. 

1/ Medea, adapted from Euripides’s play, is a closet drama, meaning that it’s meant to be read rather than seen onstage. And you can tell it wouldn’t work very well onstage, unless heavily edited: there are too many long speeches, some extremely long; much of the play doesn’t feel particularly dramatic. But I didn’t find it enjoyable to read either (though perhaps Emily Wilson is partly to blame). Compared to the Euripides play, it is more violent and sensationalist; Seneca’s Medea is more brutal, less conflicted, killing her own children in front of their father; Jason appears less despicable; the nurse and the chorus don’t seem to have much sympathy for Medea; the play as a whole is cruder. 

Elizabethan playwrights probably enjoyed the savagery and violence though. 

The interesting thing about reading Seneca is that I realise even though the Athenian playwrights deal with horrific, disturbing subjects, their plays are not just violent and sensational. They’re a lot subtler, more sophisticated and profound than Seneca and the revenge plays of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans—Hamlet, or Shakespeare in general, is obviously an exception, but Titus Andronicus is also a crude, ridiculous play, nothing like Shakespeare’s mature plays. 

I didn’t even like Euripides’s Medea, compared to his other plays, but it’s subtler and more nuanced than Seneca’s version. 

2/ Oedipus is adapted from Oedipus the King by Sophocles (also known as Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannus). Coleridge thinks the Sophocles play is one of the three best plots in the world (the others are Tom Jones by Fielding—I agree!—and The Alchemist by Ben Jonson). I doubt anyone would say that about the Seneca play.

The brilliance of the Sophocles play is in the way the plot unfolds, the way the characters gradually discover the horrible truth—Jocasta is to know before Oedipus—the tension arises because of something that has already happened, not something that is happening. The myth—a man kills his father and marries his mother—is sensational and disturbing, but Sophocles seems to be more interested in questions about fate and human agency. At the same time, he develops the character of Oedipus so that you can see why Oedipus is in the position he’s in: because he is imperious and even hot-tempered, he killed a man on the road, who turns out to be his father Laius; because he is intelligent and resourceful, he defeated the Sphinx and got awarded the queen of Thebes, who happened to be his mother. 

You don’t get any of that in the Seneca play. The plot is awkward; they summon back the spirit of the dead Laius and he names the killer (how stupid is this?); Seneca seems to delight in gory detail (do we need all that gory description of the sacrifice? why does he expand and exaggerate Oedipus’s blinding?); the chorus, for some reason, sings a few times about Bacchus and the horrific death of Pentheus, adding to the gruesome quality of the play; Seneca also changes Jocasta’s death, making it melodramatic and also reducing the nobility of her character as we see in the Sophocles play; I don’t mind that Jocasta dies onstage, but don’t like that she dies in front of Oedipus—no, worse than that, it is ambiguous and suggests that Oedipus might help kill Jocasta; the whole thing is just sordid. 

And that’s just the impression I’ve got from reading Seneca: it’s hard to explain, but his characters just don’t have the nobility we see in the Greek plays; even in the case of Phaedra, both Euripides’s Phaedra and Racine’s Phèdre have a nobility that Seneca’s character lacks. 

I read Oedipus in E. F. Watling’s translation, which felt more poetic than Emily Wilson’s translation of the same play and Medea. 

(On a side note: I wrote in my blog post about Shakespeare and the Greeks that Shakespeare didn’t depict tension that arises because of something that already happened, as we see in Oedipus the King. That is not entirely true, or rather, Shakespeare doesn’t write an entire play about that, but he does do it in the final scenes of Othello—tension arises as Emilia and then Othello realises what he has done, and what Iago has done). 

3/ Thyestes is another fabula crepidata, which is a Latin play with Greek subjects. There are however no extant Greek plays about the myth, so nothing to which to compare Seneca’s play. 

To be honest, there are interesting passages in the play. 

“MINISTER You do not fear your people’s disapproval?

ATREUS Of the advantages of monarchy

The greatest is that subjects are compelled

Not only to endure but to approve

Their master’s actions.

MINISTER                        Men compelled by fear

To praise, may be by fear compelled to hate.

He who desires to win sincere approval

Will seek it in the heart, not on the tongue.

ATREUS A moderate man may win sincere approval;

It takes a strong man to enforce feigned praise.

Men must be made to want what they dislike.

MINISTER Let the king want what’s right, who will oppose him?

ATREUS The king who binds himself to want what’s right Sits on a shaky throne.” 

(Act 2) 

(translated by E. F. Watling) 

Now that is Seneca the philosopher, Seneca the statesman, Seneca the emperor’s advisor. 

In terms of language and imagery, there are many striking passages: 

“FURY […] Nor shall the heavens

Be unaffected by your evil deeds:

What right have stars to twinkle in the sky?

Why need their lights still ornament the world?

Let night be black, let there be no more day.

Let havoc rule this house; call blood and strife

And death; let every corner of this place

Be filled with the revenge of Tantalus!...” 

(Act 1) 

Or: 

“ATREUS It is. My heart is shaken with a storm

Of passion that confounds it to its centre.

I am compelled, although I know not whither,

I am compelled by forces.… Hear! the earth

Groans from its depths; the sky is clear, but thunder

Rumbles, and from the house there came a crash

As if the roof were falling; and our gods,

Shaken, have turned their backs on us. So be it!

Let a black deed be done, which gods above

Will fear to see.” 

(Act 2) 

Reading these plays, especially Thyestes, I can see the influence of Seneca on Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights: the 5-act division, the use of (bombastic) rhetoric, the fascination with evil and taste for extreme violence. All the lurid, gruesome scenes I have seen in 16th-17th century English revenge plays—a character bites off his own tongue and spits it out, a villain kisses and gets killed by a poisoned skull, someone appears onstage with a bloody heart on a dagger, and so on—all seem to trace back to the spectacle of violence and gory detail in Seneca. The pie in Titus Andronicus is a direct reference to Thyestes and—look at all the horrible murders in that play—I can see why someone would say it looks like an attempt to out-Seneca Seneca.

However, as I wrote back then, there’s nothing to the revenge plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries—nothing but spectacle—and very often those plays leave a bad taste in my mouth afterwards because the characters are all monstrous and bestial, and the same could be said about Seneca’s plays. Out of the four I’ve read, Thyestes is the most horrific—Atreus takes revenge on his own brother Thyestes by roasting Thyestes’s children and feeding them to him—it is repulsive. 

I think I’ve got enough of Seneca. 

Phèdre by Jean Racine and the Phaedra myth

1/ Wouldn’t you agree it’s a good idea that I, instead of going straight from Molière (1622–1673) to his contemporary Racine (1639–1699), read Racine’s greatest play now when I’m already acquainted with the versions by Euripides and Seneca (and they’re still fresh in my mind)? As with the Electra myth under the hands of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, it’s fascinating to watch great artists play with the same material (which is very different from the mind-numbing tedium of Hollywood pumping out sequels and remakes for easy money). 

I read the translation by Robert Bruce Boswell, who uses the names Phaedra, Hippolytus, Theseus, Aricia, Oenone, Theramenes, etc. instead of Phèdre, Hippolyte, Thésée, Aricie, Œnone, Théramène, etc.

Starting from the same myth about Phaedra fancying her stepson Hippolytus, Euripides simplifies the plot, in which Theseus is simply away; Seneca complicates it, emphasising Phaedra’s background and the image of the bull, having Theseus go to the underworld to help a friend abduct Persephone, and mentioning that Theseus killed Hippolytus’s mother Antiope; Racine complicates the plot even more by creating the character of Aricia, daughter and sole survivor of the royal house supplanted by Theseus and the woman with whom Hippolytus has fallen in love. I guess the French wouldn’t buy a character who is indifferent to love and women. Racine also has Theseus rumoured to be dead, which is believed to lead to a rivalry for the throne between Phaedra’s son, Hippolytus, and Aricia, but which actually causes Phaedra to act on her feelings for Hippolytus and Hippolytus to confess his feelings to Aricia. That sounds more French. 

2/ Racine’s version is closer to Seneca’s in terms of plot. In both plays, the gods are mentioned but don’t appear. In both plays, Phaedra tells Hippolytus her feelings. In both plays, the rape accusation—the idea of attacking first—comes from the nurse. In both plays, Phaedra is alive as she falsely accuses Hippolytus (though Racine’s Phaedra only insinuates, the nurse is the one making the accusation). In both plays, Phaedra kills herself in front of Theseus after Hippolytus’s death. However, like Euripides, Racine has Theseus confronting Hippolytus and the son trying to defend himself. 

The central difference between Racine and Seneca, however, is that Seneca’s characters are all base and repulsive, whereas Racine’s characters are nobler and more sympathetic. Phaedra, or Phèdre, struggles against her own passion. 

“PHAEDRA […] I look’d, alternately turn’d pale and blush’d

To see him, and my soul grew all distraught;

A mist obscured my vision, and my voice

Falter’d, my blood ran cold, then burn’d like fire;

Venus I felt in all my fever’d frame,

Whose fury had so many of my race

Pursued. 

[…] I fled his presence everywhere, but found him--

O crowning horror!—in his father’s features.” 

And when she confesses her feelings to Hippolytus (or Hippolyte), not knowing about Aricia: 

“PHAEDRA […] I love. But think not

That at the moment when I love you most

I do not feel my guilt; no weak compliance

Has fed the poison that infects my brain.

The ill-starr’d object of celestial vengeance,

I am not so detestable to you

As to myself.” 

She only yields to Oenone’s persuasions when she—everyone—thinks Theseus is dead. Later she gets a bad conscience as she, following Oenone, smears Hippolytus’s name to save her own honour.  

Now look at her when she realises that he loves someone else. 

“PHAEDRA […] Ye gods, when, deaf to all my sighs and tears,

He arm’d his eye with scorn, his brow with threats,

I deem’d his heart, impregnable to love,

Was fortified ’gainst all my sex alike.

And yet another has prevail’d to tame

His pride, another has secured his favour.” 

How could anyone not pity her? 

“PHAEDRA […] Alas! full freedom had they

To see each other. Heav’n approved their sighs;

They loved without the consciousness of guilt;

And every morning’s sun for them shone clear,

While I, an outcast from the face of Nature,

Shunn’d the bright day, and sought to hide myself.”

She is nobler, and more psychologically complex than Seneca’s character. Her suffering is a mixture of shame and guilt and heartbreak. 

Like Euripides, Racine also gives a sense of nobility to Hippolytus and Theseus—something Seneca doesn’t do—Hippolytus’s death in Racine’s play is heartbreaking, as he previously decided to remain silent about Phaedra’s sexual advances because “Let us trust to Heav’n/ My vindication, for the gods are just.” The irony! 

3/ Aricia, Racine’s added character, is dull, barely alive. But the character of the nurse is the most interesting one in the three plays, because of the relationship between her and Phaedra. 

When Phaedra, at the beginning of the play, wants to kill herself, Oenone tries to dissuade her, saying that her suicide would offend the gods and be a betrayal of Theseus and her children. When that doesn’t work, she says: 

“OENONE […] Think how in my arms you lay

New born. For you, my country and my children

I have forsaken. Do you thus repay

My faithful service?” 

Racine develops their relationship further and emphasises her devotion: Oenone is the one who tells Phaedra to stay alive; she is the one who persuades her to speak to Hippolytus after Theseus’s supposed death; and she is the one who comes up with the rape accusation. And yet: 

“PHAEDRA […] What hast thou done? Why did your wicked mouth

With blackest lies slander his blameless life?

Perhaps you’ve slain him, and the impious pray’r

Of an unfeeling father has been answer’d.

No, not another word! Go, hateful monster […]. 

OENONE (alone) O gods! to serve her what have I not done?

This is the due reward that I have won.”

I’m not telling you what happens in the end, but Racine turns her into a tragic character. Unlike Seneca, he gets you to understand and have pity for all the characters, even when they do wicked things. 

This is a great play. 

Phaedra (or Hippolytus) by Seneca

1/ I have always been intrigued by Seneca’s influence on Shakespeare and other Elizabethan playwrights, so my curiosity about other versions of the Hippolytus/ Phaedra myth is a good excuse to pick up Seneca. Hence the big jump from Greece of the 5th century BC to Rome of the 1st century. 

Funnily enough (at least to me), the time gap between Sophocles or Euripides and Seneca is slightly bigger than that between Shakespeare and us. 

2/ Seneca’s Phaedra and Euripides’s Hippolytus are quite different, though if I’m not mistaken, Seneca’s play might be closer to the Greek myth and Euripides is the one making changes to the story.

In Seneca’s play, Phaedra is responsible for her own actions, lusting after her stepson and confessing to him her feelings—Seneca removes both Aphrodite and Artemis (here Venus and Diana) from the story—Hippolytus is still devoted to Diana and vowing chastity, but she doesn’t appear. 

The nurse is instead the voice of reason and morality and there’s a long scene in which she chastises Phaedra: 

“NURSE […] Why, my poor mistress, why are you resolved

To heap fresh infamy upon your house,

With sin worse than your mother’s? Wilful sin

Is a worse evil than unnatural passion;

That comes by fate, but sin comes from our nature.

You think, because your husband’s eyes are closed

To all this upper world, that you are free

To sin without fear?” 

(translated by E. F. Watling) 

She is in the right, but in Seneca’s depiction she’s a tedious moralising character. One interesting bit is her denial of gods:  

“NURSE: That love is god

Is the vile fiction of unbridled lust

Which, for its licence, gives to lawless passion

The name of an imagined deity.

[…] Vain fancies

Conceived by crazy minds, they are all false!” 

An atheist in a play written in ancient Rome? 

The thing that saves her from being a two-dimensional character is that she’s the one to come up with the rape allegation: 

“NURSE Now all the evil is exposed. What then?

Shall resolution faint or fail? Not so.

We must prefer a counter charge against him,

Take up the case ourselves and prove him guilty

Of violation. Crime must cover crime.

The safest shield in danger is attack.

When the offence is private, who shall say

Which of us sinned and which was sinned against?” 

3/ The play is full of long speeches, full of rhetoric, which is clearly an influence on Elizabethan playwrights including Shakespeare. Just look at the scene between Phaedra’s nurse and Hippolytus for example. All rhetoric, which makes me realise that there’s not much of that in ancient Greek plays at all. 

“NURSE […] Why – if from our life

We banish Venus, who replenishes

And recreates our dwindling stock, the earth

Will soon become a desert, drear and ugly,

The sea a dead sea, where there are no fish,

The sky will have no birds, the woods no beasts,

The air will be a place where nothing moves

Except the passing winds…”

The nurse is persuading Hippolytus to leave his vows to Diana and “seize pleasure”, which makes me think of Shakespeare’s sonnets 1-17. 

Seneca expands on Hippolytus’s hostility towards women: 

“HIPPOLYTUS […] Mothers, defying nature’s law, destroyed

Their infants ere they lived. Stepmothers –

What can one say of them? – wild beasts

Have more compassion. Woman, say what you will,

Is the prime mover of all wickedness;

Expert in every evil art, woman

Lays siege to man; for her adulteries

Cities have burned, nation made war on nation,

Multitudes perished in the fall of kingdoms.” 

Not very likeable, is he? Euripides’s Hippolytus may be a bit irrational and self-righteous in his vows of chastity, but mostly comes across as indifferent to women and all the troubles that come with romance. Seneca’s Hippolytus is a misogynist. 

“HIPPOLYTUS I hate them all; I dread, I shun, I loathe them.

I choose – whether by reason, rage, or instinct –

I choose to hate them. Can you marry fire

To water? Can ships safely sail the quicksands?

Can Tethys make the sun rise in the west?

Can wild wolves smile on does? No more can I

Consent to have a tender thought for woman.”

Rhetoric. 

4/ Whereas Euripides creates a tragedy of three people (Phaedra, Hippolytus, Theseus), Seneca focuses on Phaedra, creating a scene of her offering herself to Hippolytus and getting rejected; removing the two scenes between Hippolytus and his father Theseus, including the one in which Theseus confronts Hippolytus and the accused tries to defend himself in vain; moving Phaedra’s suicide to the end, after Hippolytus’s awful death. In Euripides’s play, Phaedra’s suicide is about shame; in Seneca’s, about guilt. 

It is an interesting play. Some of you may prefer Seneca’s portrayal of Phaedra as a shameless, lustful, wicked woman, but all three characters are more unpleasant—if not downright repulsive—in his play, and I find Euripides’s play much more moving and tragic. 

Addendum: This is a good essay comparing treatment of character in the two plays.