Pelopidarum secunda: a ‘site of memory’ in the history of Elizabethan revenge tragedy

Abstract

Pelopidarum secunda is an understudied anonymous English adaptation of Seneca's Agamemnon and Sophocles' Electra. The play is preserved only in manuscript and was probably performed at Winchester College around 1590. Through a combination of Marvin Carlson's notions of ‘ghosting’ and of the ‘site of memory’ with a neo‐historicist approach, the article offers a close analysis of this neglected school play from an intertextual, performative, and extratextual perspective. The analysis shows that the play is haunted by memories of its classical sources and of other performance contexts, including the church, and contains potential allusions to contemporary royal figures. In so doing, I argue that Pelopidarum secunda showcases the role of classical models in the history of Elizabethan revenge tragedy. By conjuring up memorable sources—Sophocles and Seneca—and events—past performances and executions—the unknown playwright(s) had the ambition to make Pelopidarum secunda equally memorable. Although this attempt has evidently failed given the obscurity into which the play has fallen so far, Pelopidarum secunda deserves a place in the archival memory of classical reception as well as further scholarly attention within early modern English drama studies.