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ALL THE WORLD'S OFFSTAGE: METAPHYSICAL AND METAFICTIONAL ASPECTS IN SENECA'S HERCVLES FVRENS*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2017
Extract
In his essay on Seneca, T.S. Eliot used the Hercules Furens (= HF) as his example to illustrate ‘this curious freak of non-theatrical drama’. Even though Senecan scholarship has by and large moved away from his indictment, the sense that the attention seems to be directed away from the stage points to the play's unique dramaturgy. The surest indicator of this reverse orientation is the conspicuous absence of Hercules himself for much of the play. Hercules is (or wishes to be) permanently ‘elsewhere’. His entrance is delayed for a long time; once home, he rushes offstage after a few lines to kill Lycus. He returns onstage only to be attacked by madness, and is drawn inside the palace again to kill his wife and sons. When his madness abates, he falls asleep onstage; on waking, he longs for a place beyond the known world (and underworld) and finally exits into exile. This article proposes a closer examination of the semiotics of space, especially the symbolic value of the offstage. Seneca is constantly drawing attention to the pull towards the stage perimeter and the unseen offstage, characterizing the cosmic nature of Hercules’ conflict with Juno and questioning the hero's place in the world as the son of an immortal father.
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Footnotes
*
Many thanks to Denis Feeney for reading and commenting on this article.
References
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28 Kohn (n. 2), 97. HF 118–21: (Juno) stabo et, ut certo exeant | emissa neruo tela, librabo manu, | regam furentis arma, pugnanti Herculi | tandem fauebo. Cf. HF 989–91: (Herc.) excutiat leues | neruus sagittas. tela sic mitti decet | Herculea.
29 Cf. Thy. 893–5, Med. 992–4. The point is made by Schiesaro, A., The Passions in Play: Thyestes and the Dynamics of Senecan Drama (Cambridge, 2003), 181CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Easterling, P., ‘Gods on stage in Greek tragedy’, in Dalfen, J. et al. (edd.), Romana. Festschrift für Walter Pötscher (Grazer Beiträge Supplement 5) (Graz, 1993), 77-86 Google Scholar, at 80: ‘The gods, one might say, are usually brought onstage to do a job like that of the dramatist himself. This directorial function—the god as didaskalos—is easily identified at the beginnings of plays, when a deity, unseen by the other characters, explains to the audience things that the characters themselves are not permitted to know … This certainly helps the audience to feel pity for the human victims but it can also be seen as a device for drawing attention to the medium itself, to the play as a play, in that two separate perspectives are successively given to the audience.’
30 Fitch (n. 13), 46-7 and 350-2.
31 Ever the realist, Lycus doubts Hercules’ divine parentage as if to mock both Jupiter's and Hercules’ absence (quo patre genitus caelitum sperat domos?, 438); Amphitruo intervenes.
32 Kohn (n. 2), 96.
33 With the possible exception of Theseus, see n. 38 below.
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40 See Baertschi, A.M., ‘Drama and epic narrative: the test case of the messenger speech in Seneca's Agamemnon ’, in Gildenhard, I. and Revermann, M. (edd.), Beyond the Fifth Century: Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages (Berlin, New York, 2010), 247-68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kirichenko (n. 9), 10-11. On Theseus’ account, see Baertschi, A., ‘Epic elements in Senecan tragedy’, in Harrison, G. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Roman Tragedy (Leiden, 2015), 171-95, at 188-91Google Scholar.
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43 Juno may be thought of as the ‘spectator of a pained spectator’, akin to Atreus’ sadism (Thy. 903–5). The phrase is used of Atreus by Schiesaro (n. 29), 60.
44 In Euripides (Eur. HF 886–909), Amphitruo's cries can be heard from within the palace during the slaughter, and are amplified by the chorus; they are not descriptive, as the messenger scene follows (910–1015).
45 Note that Amphitruo moves towards madness, in his case metaphorical (amens).
46 Theseus’ presence would be problematic but seems to me indicated by Theseus’ later reaction in hiding his face (HF 1173). Fitch (n. 13) points to HF 912–15 for motivating Theseus’ exit. See also Billerbeck (n. 23), on lines 1032–4. For the problem, see Sutton (n. 2), 45.
47 See Billerbeck (n. 23), 32-3.
48 Aygon (n. 35), 319-32 comments on the way in which the spectator/listener is made to see through Hercules’ eyes. Amphitruo's involvement is equally important; he is not just providing a neutral running commentary on the action in the manner of pantomime, pace Zanobi, A., Seneca's Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime (London, 2014), 104Google Scholar.
49 Cf. Rosenmeyer (n. 16), 143: ‘Amphitryon surmises that Hercules is imagining these horrors. But is not Hercules’ vision more authentic than that of Amphitryon? He describes and lives through a war of the heavens, with himself at the center of it, both seemingly disengaged and, more profoundly, its unmistakable and deeply responsible source.’
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53 Cf. Eur. HF 1263–5, where Hercules expresses the opposite sentiment.
54 Barchiesi, A., ‘Rappresentazioni del dolore e interpretazione nell’Eneide ’, A&A 40 (1994), 109-24Google Scholar; translated as ‘Representations of suffering and interpretation in the Aeneid’, in Hardie, P. (ed.), Virgil. Critical Assessments of Classical Authors (London, 1999), 324-44Google Scholar.
55 He has of course a mortal twin, Iphicles.
56 Kohn (n. 2), 106.
57 Cf. Amphitruo's appeal to Hercules to recognize his own son (HF 1016–17): natus hic uultus tuos | habitusque reddit; cernis, ut tendat manus?
58 This taboo (Hor. Ars P. 179–88) is a matter of debate, especially in light of Seneca's Medea, which seems to violate it. Instead of heralding a general development towards representing violence onstage, it might have been a one-time experiment. In that case, Seneca might still refer to his own extraordinary choice there (alluding to Jason with genitore coram); HF has the murder of wife and children happening offstage.
59 The suicide of Sophocles’ Ajax onstage seems to be the precedent for Seneca's Phaedra and Jocasta, who likewise kill themselves onstage with the sword (Phaedra 1197–8, Oed. 1038–9), instead of the gender-appropriate noose. The shock value of this act should not be underestimated, in my view, and gender (cf. Lucretia) might be relevant to the discussion. For another view on onstage-suicide in Seneca, see Coffey, M. and Mayer, R. (edd.), Seneca Phaedra (Cambridge, 1990), 190Google Scholar and Ker, J., The Deaths of Seneca (Oxford, 2009), 113-46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 Fitch (n. 13), on line 1264 notes that this is the only instance of coram in Seneca's tragedies and may possibly allude to Verg. Aen. 2.538–9: qui nati coram me cernere letum | fecisti et patrios foedasti funere uultus. The speaker is Priam who laments not the death of his son but the spectacle Pyrrhus makes of it in front of his father, according to Servius.
61 Cf. Hercules’ earlier warning that Cerberus should not be seen by everybody (hoc nefas cernant duo, 603).
62 Fitch (n. 13), on line 1223.
63 Hercules’ invocation of Prometheus might be an allusion to the cataclysmic end of the Aeschylean Prometheus Bound (1080–93), in which the motionless main character embodies the conflicting tension of the universe.
64 Cf. Medea's similar plight (Med. 451–60).
65 Rehm (n. 21 [2002]), 110-12.
66 Boyle (n. 51), 111: ‘The irony for Imperial Rome, whose boundaries were coextensive with the civilized world, was that there was no place to go to. Rome was place. The purification of Rome's god (1342 f.) predated the existence of Rome. No alternate world now awaited where the impius could be cleansed.’
67 Easterling (n. 29), 78.
68 Cf. the first choral ode in which the chorus praises the unambitious life: alius curru sublimis eat (HF 196).
69 Shakespeare, As you like it, Act 2, Scene 7.
70 Note the parallel to Med. 1026, above. Hercules, however, utters these words while insane.