Drama in the margins – academic text and political context in Matthew Gwinne's Nero: Nova Tragædia (1603) and Ben Jonson's Sejanus (1603/5)

Abstract

While recent scholarship has recognized the attractions of Matthew Gwinne's chronicle history Nero (1603), its major drawback – an uncritical over‐dependence on the historical sources – has attracted the charge that the play is dramatically incoherent, ultimately a mere ‘academic exercise’. At first glance this approach might be confirmed in Gwinne's pedantic inclusion of scholarly side‐notes which add little to a play‐text already containing the whole historical record. But through a comparative reading with the quarto text of Jonson's Sejanus (first performed 1603; published with Latin side‐notes, 1605) I will argue that both authors use the interpretative potential of ‘text’ and ‘margin’ to reflect not just on the tyranny of princes but also the obedience of citizens, and more specifically the right conduct of a constituency made up, precisely, of the intended cast and audience of Nero, those closest to monarchical power, the counsellors. After sketching the controlling, pre‐emptive and fragmenting policy of margination in Sejanus in the service of a politically defensive use of the ancient historical record, as Jonson relies upon the authenticity of Tacitus to bolster the integrity of his own play, I contrast Gwinne's own practice in Act IV of Nero, which centres on the aftermath of Agrippina's murder and Nero's decision to exile his wife Octavia. Through the margins, Gwinne opens up contradictions in the historical record and invites complicating reflection and contested interpretation of Nero's reign, above all in his interrogation of the conduct of the tutor‐philosopher Seneca. By framing Seneca's role in government through ancient and modern texts that reflect on the politics and ethics of service under tyranny (above all John of Salisbury's Policraticus (1159) and Savile's The Ende of Nero (1591)), I argue that Gwinne's ‘Tacitist’ Nero goes far beyond mere homiletic instruction.

‘[<i>Overhearing</i>]’: Printing Parentheses and Reading Power in Ben Jonson’s <i>Sejanus</i>

“…Critical orthodoxy regarding Sejanus tends to style Jonson's Tiberius as a figure consistently in the know: in introducing his 1990 edition of the play Philip J. Ayres described him as 'the epitome of astute Machiavellian manipulation and cool cunning', while Emma Buckley refers to 'the controlled, Machiavellian Tiberius of Jonson's play' in her recent analysis of the 1605 quarto's marginal notes. 3 At various and frequent localized points throughout the play, though, critics only infer that Tiberius is 'controlled' in his behaviour; his 'cool cunning' does not obviously always govern that behaviour. In 1925 C.H.…”