The Latin Drama of the Renaissance (1340-1640)

Abstract

The Latin drama of the Renaissance and Reformation has been studied mostly in Germany. Bahlmann and Bolte laid the bibliographical foundations in the 1890s, and at the same time Creizenach was publishing the volumes of his great Geschichte des neueren Dramas, which still contain the most comprehensive survey that we have of neo-Latin drama up to 1550. Rossi and Sanesi have dealt to some extent with the Latin drama in Italy, but their treatment is superficial compared with Creizenach's. In French there is no significant scholarly work in this field. In England J. A. Symonds gave a good account of the humanist drama in his Renaissance in Italy (1875) twenty years before Creizenach, but it was not until the appearance of Boas’ University Drama in the Tudor Age in 1907 that any work on Anglo-Latin dramatists was available.

Staging romance across the Channel: French–English exchanges and generic common ground

“…Hence, the predilection for biblical topics with 'happy endings' in the Latin 'tragicomedies' that circulated throughout Europe and nourished theatre in the vernaculars. 13 A French example is the tragicomedy of Nabuchodonosor (1561), by the Protestant Antoine de La Croix, evoking the trials of the contemporary faithful on the eve of the first War of Religion (1562). Those trials are adumbrated in the condemnation to the fiery furnace of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego for refusing to worship the golden image.…”

Neo-Latin Verse-Translations of the Bible

“…But Jonah appeared in at least seven versions: those by Johann Hoffmann (constructed as that most dismal of all literary forms, the cento -in this case, as so often, drawn from the poems of the unfortunate Virgil; In translations of the Apocrypha an interesting development is the appearance of dramas in elegiac form: 19 Cornelius Schonaeus produced a Tobias comicus 20 (Strassburg, 1583), Xystus Betuleius (i.e., Sixt Birck) a Iudith comica 21 (Strassburg, 1584), and Nicolaus Frischlin a Susanna comica 22 (Strassburg, 1595). There can be little doubt that these plays were actually presented by young students: not only was there a flourishing and extensive adult drama (tragedy, melodrama, and comedy) in Neo-Latin literature, 23 there were also scores of less exalted productions intended to improve students' morality and Latinity alike. As for the rest of the Apocrypha, we can point to several versions of the Wisdom of Jesus of Sirach, 24 and naturally an epic version of Maccabees appears -Heinrich Walter's Iudas Maccabaeus (Herborn, 1604).…”

Neo-Latin Drama in the Low Countries

“…Yet, Bradner listed him as one of of the 'three most considerable Jesuit dramatists' among the French playwrights. 197 The theme -or better, the themes -from the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50 were quite appealing for playwrights. We already noted the Joseph plays by Macropedius, Schonaeus and Grotius.…”