Seneca by Candlelight: And Other Stories of Renaissance Drama

"English Seneca read by candlelight", wrote the Elizabethan author Thomas Nashe, "will afford you whole Hamlets". In the early decades of this 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. In Seneca by Candlelight Lorraine Helms revisits this terrain to explore the rich and various ways in which classical learning shaped the theatrical culture of the Renaissance. Grounding her book as much in her own experiences as a performer as on her easy command of literary and social history, Helms 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.