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The Concept and the Form of Tragedy from the End of Antiquity to the Renaissance1

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The Concept and the Form of Tragedy from the End of Antiquity to the Renaissance1 Maria Maślanka-Soro (Jagiellonian University in Kraków) The Concept and the Form of Tragedy from the End of Antiquity to the Renaissance1 1. The European Middle Ages did not possess precise knowledge about the genres existing in antiquity. This ignorance extended to tragedy. In this case ignorance of the existence of Aristotle’s Poetics, of Greek drama and, to a certain extent, of Seneca’s Roman tragedies, proved decisive.2 While in the Poetics Aristotle considered tragedy to be the most per- fect type of poetic mimesis, making this conclusion on the basis of the texts of three great tragedians from Athens, his most accomplished stu- dent Theophrastus (a. 372–287 BC) could not perhaps have delivered such a judgment had he tried to support it on the basis of dramas by his contemporaries, only fragments of which have survived. It is worth remembering that his succinct deinition of tragedy, quoted in the Latin translation by the grammarian Diomedes at the end of the 4th century (in his Ars grammatica) as: “Tragoedia est heroicae fortunae in ad- versis comprehensio” (in the original: Tragōidia estin hērōikēs tychēs peristasis),3 along with Diomedes’ and Evanthius’ (another grammarian of the 4th century) remarks, decisively inluenced the understanding of tragedy in the Middle Ages, hence also to a certain extent the direction in 1 A detailed overview of the conceptions of tragedy in the European Middle Ages was presented by H.A. Kelly in his extensive study entitled Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993). The present analy- sis, and especially its introductory part (§ 1), owes a lot to that study. It aims at emphasizing the signiicant elements of the evolution that occurred in the genre particularly in Italian literature on the basis of a few selected examples. 2 The Latin translation of Aristotle’s Poetics by William of Moerbecke (1278) remained almost unnoticed; it has to be added that even later, in the time of the humanism, the Vene- tian publication of the Poetics translated into Latin by Giorgio Valla (1498) was not received by a wider audience. Only the bilingual, Greek–Latin edition, also published in Venice and edited by Alessandro de’ Pazzi (1536), became the basis of the most noteworthy commen- taries on the Poetics, especially the one which was produced by Francesco Robortello. 3 Cf. Kelly, Ideas and Forms..., 9. 248 Maria Maślanka-Soro which the genre developed. By demonstrating the differences between tragedy and comedy the authors had in mind mostly the thematic crite- rion, the types of characters, and the course of events: Comoedia a tragoedia differt, quod in tragoedia introducuntur heroes, duces, reges; in commedia, humiles atque privatae personae. In illa, luctus, exsilia, caedes; in hac, amores, virginum raptus. Deinde quod in illa frequenter et poene semper laetis re- bus exitus tristes, et liberorum fortunarumque priorum in peius agnitio.4 Inter tragoediam autem et comoediam cum multa tum imprimis hoc distat, quod in comoedia mediocres fortunae hominum, parvi impetus periculorum, laetique sunt exitus actionum; at in tragoedia omnia contra: ingentes personae, magni timo- res, exitus funesti habentur; et illic prima turbulenta, tranquilla ultima, in tragoedia contrario ordine res aguntur. Tum quod in tragoedia fugienda vita, in comoedia ca- pessenda exprimitur. Postremo quod omnis comoedia de ictis est argumentis, tra- goedia saepe de histori[c]a ide petitur.5 While their intensity is greater or lesser, as emphasized by different authors, the characteristics of tragedy given above appear in its later deinitions, starting with that by Isidore of Seville and ending with the 12th- and 13th-century authors of Poetrie, where, as it will be discussed here later, the moral overtone which is missing from the deinitions above emerges. It has to be stressed that the deinitions refer to the works whose structure is narrative and where monologues and dia- logues are included. The structure is not dramatic since, as is generally known, from the times of the Roman Empire the evolution of ancient tragedy was directed towards a partial or complete loss of the theatri- cal and stage dimension: the last tragedies written in order to be staged were Varius Rufus’ Thyestes and Ovid’s Medea, both of them now lost. Many rhetoricized works classiied as representing this genre (including Seneca’s tragedies) were written in order to be recited and sung either in full or in part. A declaimer appearing in a mask and cothurni performed in it and he was frequently accompanied by a group of several mimes. For this period three forms of “tragedy” may be discussed:6 1. The pantomime ballet (tragoedia saltata or fabula saltica): the plot of the tragedy was presented by the gestures and dance movement 4 Diomedes, “Ars grammatica: De poematibus” IX, in Grammatici Latini, vol. I, ed. H. Keil (Lipsiae: Teubner, 1856), 488. 5 Evanthius, “De fabula hoc est de comoedia,” in Aelii Donati quod fertur Commentum Terentii, IV, 2 (vol. I), ed. P. Wessner (Lipsiae: Teubner, 1902), 21. 6 Cf. Kelly, Ideas and Forms..., 16–17. The Concept and the Form of Tragedy from the End of Antiquity to the Renaissance 249 by the artist, a mime; in order to play another character in the per- formance he had to change the mask. In this kind of performance the outline of the plot was already known from earlier plays or from an epic work, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There was also a version of the chorus which consisted of one or at the most several mem- bers of the chorus (choreutae). 2. The sung tragedy (tragoedia cantata). 3. The citharedy (citharoedia), where the performer sang a tragic aria with his own zither accompaniment. Numerous reports about the latter two forms originate from Sue- tonius’ De vita Caesarum (1st century AD), particularly from fragments describing the emperor Nero’s performances, and from Cassius Dio’s Historia Romana (2nd/3rd centuries AD). It is known that, in contrast with citharoedia, in tragoedia cantata, a type of one-act play which was a shortened version of full tragedy, the musical accompaniment was not produced by the performer playing the main role. Such “tragedies” had a purely ludic character and they were played not only during informal meetings, but also in the theatre, where epic narratives were recited. Later the modes of staging tragedy and epics were standardized, introducing the form of the so-called declamationes. The fact that the subject matter of both tragedy and epic was associated with prominent deeds, both good and evil, of nobly-born individuals, and that both had unhappy endings and were written in high style, led to the extending of the term “tragedy” to literary works that had been called epic by Aristotle or were based on epic subject matter. Even though we are not sure if the title of Dracontius’ Orestis tragoedia from the end of the 5th century, written in hexameter, was given to the work by the poet himself or was attached to it by a copyist afterwards in one of the manu- scripts that bears the title Orestis fabula, it is certain that throughout the Middle Ages, up to the 14th century, the term “tragedy” was used in refer- ence to Homer’s epic (not known in the original version), Virgil’s Aeneid, Lucan’s Pharsalia and Statius’ Thebaid. Moreover, it is dificult to ind the classic understanding of tragedy in the dialogic epic narratives written in hexameter or elegiac distich, such as Bernard Silvester’s Mathemati- cus sive Patricida (from the beginning of the 12th century) and Piramus and Thisbe by his student, Matthew of Vendôme. Besides the works of the grammarians Diomedes and Evanthius, Bo- ethius’ De consolatione philosophiae was an important source of the me- dieval notion of tragedy as a genre, especially on the level of the subject. More speciically, it was the case of the famous sentence reverberating 250 Maria Maślanka-Soro in the works of the earlier grammarians, which in Boethius appears as an explanation that Fortuna provides her interlocutor with. She tells him that mutability is the guarantee of a better life for him in the future: “Quid tragoediarum clamor aliud delet nisi indiscreto ictu Fortunam fe- licia regna vertentem?” (II, prose 2, 67–70). 2. The above-mentioned Mathematicus sive Patricida attributed to Bernard Silvester7 is a good example of medieval “tragedy” relecting the concep- tion originating in Diomedes’, Evanthius’ and Boethius’ views. Its content is based on the story of Oedipus and the plot, set in ancient Rome but not free from cultural contamination by the reality of the Christian Middle Ages, takes place in a historically indeterminate time. The historical in- determinacy could suggest that the story has a paradigmatic dimension: a happy married couple, whose only worry is their lack of issue, asks an astrologer for advice and inds out that on the behest of Jove and Fate a son will be born to them. Although the divinity has decided that the son would be fated to murder his father, the mother does not intend to kill the child as her husband asked her to. He suggested that otherwise her pietas for the child will be impietas for him: «Ne dubites puerum mortiicare tuum. Si patiaris eum superesse michi morituro, Hec pietas species impietatis erit.» (80–82)8 In accordance with the remaining part of the prophecy the boy, and then the youth, growing up far away from his parents and named Patri- cida by his mother in order to forewarn him, becomes the embodiment of perfection and nobility. He is as beautiful as Paris, spiritually akin to Achilles, richer than Cresus, wiser than Ulysses, and at the same time extraordinarily noble: Et Paridem geret in facie, geret intus Achillem, Nec probitas fastum nec sibi forma dabunt.
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