Elena Rossi Re-writing a Myth: Dryden’s Amphitryon and its Sources

The theme of the duplication of one member of a married couple as a result of divine deception assumes its exemplary value in the Western imaginaire in Plautus’s Amphitruo, where Jupiter takes on the appearance of Amphitryon in order to seduce his wife, Alcmena: this comedy paves the way for a series of subsequent works which take their inspiration from it, and which represent the basic stages in the reflection of European culture on the problem of the second self or double identity. Dryden’s Amphitryon may thus be seen as part of a cultural tradition which starts from Plautus and passes through Rotrou’s faithful translation and Molière’s brilliant re-elaboration, to arrive at the modern versions by Kleist and Giraudoux.1 In this series of masterpieces, the attention reserved for Dryden’s comedy – a long, complex text framed by a prologue and an epilogue, in which verses are mixed with prose, passages of high poetry with farcical quips, and elements of contemporary satire with intermezzos set to music by Purcell – has been largely negative: critical reviews generally only point out the greater influence of Molière, list the structural differences and amplifications of the plot,2 and formulate overall judgements of censure, including Walter Scott’s famous denigration.3

1 Jean Rotrou, Les deux Sosies (1636); Molière, Amphitryon (1668); John Dryden, Amphitryon or the Two Sosias (1690); Heinrich von Kleist, Amphitryon (1807); Jean Giraudoux, Amphitryon 38 (1929). 2 See Carl Hartmann, Einfluss Molière’s auf Dryden’s Komisch-Dramatische Dichtungen (Leipzig: Druck von Joachim & Jüstel, 1885); William Moseley Kerby, Molière and the Restoration Comedy in England, Dissertation (Rennes, 1907); Dudley Howe Miles, The Influence of Molière on Restoration Comedy, 2nd edn (New York: Octagon Books, 1971); Max Besing, Molières Einfluss auf das englische Lustspiel bis 1700 (Borna-Leipzig: Buchdruckerei Robert Noske, 1913); Alexander L. Bondurant, ‘The Amphitruo of Plautus, Molière’s Amphitryon and the Amphitryon of Dryden’, Sewanee Review, 33 (1925), 455-68; Ned Bliss Allen, The Sources of John Dryden’s Comedies (Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 1935); John Wilcox, The Relation of Molière to Restoration Comedy, 4th edn (New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1964); Örjan Lindberger, The Transformations of Amphitryon (Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1956); Charles Desmond Nuttal Costa, ‘The Amphitruo Theme’, in Roman Drama, ed. by T.A. Dorey and D.R. Dudley (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1965), pp. 87-122; Ferruccio Bertini, ‘Anfitrione e il suo doppio: da Plauto a Guilherme Figueiredo’, in Il sistema comico della gemellarità, ed. by G. Ferroni (Napoli: Liguori, 1981), pp. 307-36. 3 ‘He is, in general, coarse and vulgar, where Molière is witty; and where the Frenchman ventures upon a double meaning, the Englishman always contrives to make it a single one’, in The Works of John Dryden, ed. by W. Scott (Edinburgh, 1884), p. 2. 90 Elena Rossi

It should immediately be pointed out that in Dryden’s play the textual stratification is far more varied than is usually recognized, and reveals an extraordinary capacity for assimilation: while the translation from Molière is macroscopic, it is also true that Dryden includes elements from Plautus that Molière had eliminated, he clearly takes his inspiration also from Rotrou and his English predecessor, Heywood,4 and for some secondary episodes he borrows from other sources (Plautus’s Asinaria, and Le mariage forcé by Molière). Above all, he takes into consideration the Shakespearean model, with a wealth of allusions to Othello and Romeo and Juliet, which offer him a solid basis for innovation. Amid the folds of the continual references to the sources, we find elements of renewal of the tradition, which foreshadow the modern inter- pretations of the myth.

Construction of the play

The action of the play follows the classical model of the deception successfully carried out on Amphitryon and his servant Sosia by Jupiter, disguised as Amphitryon, and Mercury, disguised as Sosia. The first act is almost completely Dryden’s invention: it consists of a long scene divided into three dialogues involving Mercury, Phoebus, Jupiter and Night that focuses on the conflicts among them, and of an innovative dialogue between Phaedra, the servant who announces her master’s return, and Alcmena; this is followed by Jupiter’s first meeting, disguised as Amphitryon returning from the war, with Alcmena, a meeting that is absent in Plautus, Rotrou and Molière. The inclusion of the first act has a fairly important effect on the structure of the play. In Plautus, it is the meeting between Sosia and Mercury disguised as Sosia that occupies the opening position: the laughter aroused by the tribulations of a humble character such as a servant faced with Mercury, his violent divine double, gives some relief to the story of a crisis of identity, which otherwise would be painful and disturbing.5 Both Rotrou and Molière keep this scene (the meeting between Sosia and Mercury) in the opening position, whereas Dryden moves it to the beginning of the second act, after lingering on the representation of the gods’ whims (1.1), which generates laughter directed mainly against the gods, and after the insertion of the meeting between Alcmena and Jupiter-Amphitryon in the

4 Thomas Heywood, The Silver Age (1613), a work about the saga of Hercules, in which the second act deals with the story of Amphitryon and Alcmena. 5 See Guido Paduano, ‘L’Amphitryon di Molière e le strategie della modernità’, in Da Molière a Marivaux, ed. by B. Sommovigo (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2002), pp. 5-29 (pp. 7-8).