and not trouble to think whether he had done it before. This sort of attitude was almost certainly that of Shakespeare, Greene, Peele, Munday, and many other nameless men, and should always be borne in mind in dealing with questions of authorship of early plays. This caution does not apply to Lyly, who wrote almost entirely for one audience and, like his successor Ben Jonson, must have been obliged to be fresh at all costs. It is difficult to be sure how far Marlowe felt bound to be original. On the whole his imitation of himself looks like the involuntary repetition of a strongly marked artistic character.

CHAPTER V

THE REVENGE PLAY

PART from Marlowe it is probable that Tragedy before 1600 is all closely linked with the idea of Revenge for the family honour, and that the Elizabethans recognized its descent through Seneca from Greek tragic themes.

Orestes is the most ubiquitous figure in Greek drama, but the Edipus of Sophocles was almost more important to the development of Senecan drama. It had been foretold of Edipus that he should slay his father, who was King of Thebes, and marry with his mother. Therefore when the child was born he was given to a shepherd to expose on the mountain. But the shepherd gave the infant to the shepherd of the childless King of Corinth, and he was brought up as heir to the throne of Corinth, but the repetition of the oracle when he had grown to manhood and believed himself the true son of the King of Corinth, drove him from the country. In his wandering he met and slew his unknown father, and then came to Thebes, which the Sphinx at that time ravaged. But Edipus solved the riddle that the monster propounded to all who came to her, and so delivered the country of her, and the people, revering him almost as a god, begged him to take the empty throne and marry the widowed queen. The play deals with the revelation to the unhappy man that he, who had thought himself almost a god, had indeed fulfilled the terrible destiny foretold, and that in his person every human relationship is defaced, so

that the sight of him will quite literally pollute the sunshine. Sophocles has another play on Edipus, written much later, written, one supposes, to underline his meaning. Edipus, a wanderer like Cain, is about to die, but his body, with its strange taboo, will be a valuable possession to the state that possesses his grave. The play deals with the struggle and ends with Edipus's strange passing, called by a supernatural voice and unseen of any. It is like the story of the translation of Elijah. The element of Edipus's story that seems to have affected the Senecan tradition is the association of a supernatural quality with the perpetuation of great and unnatural crimes.

The combination of these two heroes, Orestes and Edipus, in various degrees accounts for the typical hero of Seneca. He deals with the traditional stories in all but one play, "Octavia," but " Edipus" was perhaps the most important. Seneca follows Sophocles very closely in the dramatic part. There is only one new passage, namely, the description of the prophet's invocation of the dead Laius to explain the oracle. It takes place in a valley dark with trees, and the incantations rend the earth, so that Creon, who describes the scene, can see the underworld and the tormented shades. Many phantoms appear, and last Laius himself.

A scene of this sort appears in most of Seneca's plays, and undoubtedly influenced early Elizabethan drama. It combined with the ghost of Thyestes in Seneca's "Agamemnon," and the ghost of Tantalus and Megara in the "Thyestes" to suggest the ghosts of the Revenge plays. Tantalus and Megæra are directly imitated by Kyd in the “Spanish Tragedy in Andrea and the figure of Revenge. The rest of the action in both plays is supposed to be incited by the ghostly spectators. Space is lacking to show the various elements by which the ghost in "Hamlet"

was suggested, but it is clearly traceable also to Seneca.

But more important than these suggestions for episodes and form is the Senecan influence on the tragic hero and the ethical thought implied in the drama.

There are two heroes of importance to our subject in Senecan drama-Hercules and Atreus. The importance of Hercules—the hero of two of the plays—is that he was frankly half divine, half human. Juno, who hates him, bids him "seek himself a throne in Heaven and scorn his human lot." Unable to subdue him in any other way, she finally sends madness upon him and in his frenzy he slays his children. The tradition of a tragic hero who aspires to divinity is therefore clear in Hercules, and also the further tradition that this aspiration involves him not only in terrible mental anguish but also in guilt.

This latter point is made clearest in Edipus, who is simply a coarser version of the dipus of Sophocles. It may be noticed in parenthesis that the scene in which Antigone leading her blind father describes to him a view of the sea from a lofty cliff probably suggested Edgar's description to Gloucester of the scene from Dover Cliff. But the importance of Edipus is his claim to almost superhuman power; his pollution by terrible but unintentional sin and his final supernatural passing.

Atreus is the hero of the "Thyestes," perhaps for English drama the most important of all, and yet the character in which Seneca shows at his worst. Atreus has been wronged by his brother Thyestes, who has sought to deprive him of both wife and kingdom. Atreus comes on to the stage with a slave, to whom he expresses himself as freely as in soliloquy. He is ashamed that he has not shown his royal nature yet by a terrible vengeance.

"O slothful, indolent, weak, unavenged

This last I deem for tyrants greatest wrong.

.. Dost thou, O angry Atreus, waste the time In idle lamentations?

.. Up! do a deed which none shall e'er approve But one whose fame none shall e'er cease to speak."

Later on he has worked himself into a passion of fury, and in this state, which he regards as inspired, has conceived a diabolical vengeance.

And

"I know not what great passion in my heart
Wilder than I have known, beyond the bounds
Of human nature, rises, urges on

My slothful hands.”

"This evil shall be done
Which gods ye fear."

His plan is to decoy his brother's children to him, kill them and serve them as food at a pretended reconciliation feast to their miserable father. This disgusting story is used both in "Titus Andronicus" and in one of Marston's plays, probably in many more.

The importance of Atreus is his identification of virtue with the doing of appalling deeds in defence of personal honour, and his fear that he himself is not sufficiently noble to feel the proper resentment. His attitude in this last respect should be compared with the soliloquy of Hamlet after the player's passion :

"O what a rogue and pleasant slave am I!

it cannot be,

But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kytes
With this slave's offal."

Compare also Hieronimo's shame when the poor man comes demanding vengeance for his son's death.