Seneca in Early Elizabethan England^*

Abstract

In the 1560s a group of men associated with the universities, and especially the early English law schools, the Inns of Court, translated nine of Seneca’s ten tragedies into English. Few studies address these texts and those that do concentrate on their contributions to the development of English drama. Why such works were important for those who composed them remains unclear. This essay examines the translations against the background of the social, political, and literary culture of the Inns in the 1560s. In this context, they look less like forms of dramatic invention than kinds of writing that facilitated the translators’ Latin learning, personal interactions, and political thinking and involvement.

The Performance of Learning: University Drama at Oxford in 1566

“…In her recent piece on sixteenth century translations of Senecan drama by students at the Inns of Court, Jessica Winston notes although it might be tempting to think of such writings as diversions, they were rather very much of a piece with the professional and political interests of their authors, helping them […] to understand and shape the political world they sought to join and to participate in and reflect upon it. 26 Since the text of Palamon and Arcyte has been lost, it is impossible to make claims of a similar detailed nature here. however, as I have tried to demonstrate, the evidence that we do have suggests that the professional and political interests of the university, as well as its desire to join and participate in the political world, were to a certain extent embodied by the performance of the play.…”