Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book
"English Seneca read by candlelight," wrote the Elizabethan author Thomas Nashe, "will afford you whole Hamlets." In the early decades of the twentieth century, literary and theater historians took Nashe at his word,
finding Senecan tragedy at the source of Renaissance drama. More recently, critics have been inclined to dismiss traces of classical antiquity as a superficial veneer on a drama derived from medieval traditions. Lorraine Helms revisits this terrain to explore the rich and various ways in which classical learning shaped the theatrical culture of the Renaissance. She uncovers the practical advice on acting and stagecraft to be found in the writings of ancient rhetoricians; reconstructs the extraordinary circumstances under which an English woman first rendered Euripides into her native language; and ponders the precedents in antiquity for Elizabethan portrayals of prostitution and female martyrdom.
- ISBN10 0812234138
- ISBN13 9780812234138
- Publish Date 29 September 1997
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 12 January 2017
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Pennsylvania Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 216
- Language English