エリザベス朝演劇における復讐の諸相 : セネカとマキアヴェリを通して

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The following study is one of the steps leading us to a more profound and broad examination of the Elizabethan theater. Here we devote ourselves to the study of Seneca's and Machiavelli's reality and their influences upon Elizabethan dramatists including Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Webster and others. Our chief interest will be reduced to Shakespeare for his major character, versatility and uniqueness. Consideration of Elizabethan plays leads us to recall the two great characters who had very forceful and influential personalities in their own times. One is Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4? B. C.-A. D. 65), a philosopher and tragic dramatist, who is the best illustration of the Silver Age style and one of the most significant figures in Latin literature. He is famous for his rhetoric especially fitting for recitation. The sources of his dramas are Greek tragedies as indicated in his titles such as Hercules Furens, Troades, Phoenissae, Medea, Phaedra, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes, Hercules Oetaeus and Octavia, but his plays are for recitation, not for performances on a stage we can recognize in Greek plays. In addition his plays lack the spiritual profundity and human conflict, compared with Greek ones. Stoic Seneca shows Blood-Revenge in his ten plays which influences the Elizabethans and ironically teaches us the fundamental value of moral and conscience from the Stoic point of view, though moral and conscience seem incompatible with bloody revenges. This Blood-Revenge sometimes takes the form of "vendetta" which means a prolonged bloody feud marked by bitter hostility towards antagonistic relatives. Those characters in the Elizabethan dramas are recognized in Hieronimo in Spanish Tragedy, Richard III in Richard III, Titus in Titus Andronicus, Vendice in The Revenger's Tragedy and Florence in The White Devil. The other unforgettable figure is Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) who has been unfortunately misunderstood as an unscrupulous, scheming, crafty and cynical one influencing the rise and fall of the Florentine Republic of Renaissance Italy where Leonards da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael created their brilliant works and lives, while Martin Luther in Germany was protesting against Catholic authority and corruption. Machiavelli is great for his pathos desiring for the resurrection of the Republic and the unity of Italy, leaving some great footsteps and works among which we have Il Principe (The Prince) and Discorsi (The Discourses) making comments on the first ten books of Levy's History of Rome. His idea lies not in what is cynically called Machiavellism, but in political idealism making Italy united by the power of the leading Medici without being interfered with dogmatic Roman Catholicism at that time. Contrary to his will, he exposed himself to the dishonourable name of craftiness, unscrupulousness, cynicism and intrigue. This dishonourably misunderstood name directly streamed into the characters of Elizabethan plays such as Barabas in The Jew of Malta, Mortimer in Edward II, Iago in Othello, Richard of Gloucester in Richard III. Blood vengeance is at times thought to be a natural human quality from a philosophical point of view. We are afraid that a human being is so cruel and crafty as to revenge himself on his assailants by bringing their bloodshed. This could be the reality of human nature which would be never extinguished from his mind. He could revenge himself on them in the name of righteousness. We can in Shakespeare's plays recognize Seneca's Stoicism in King Lear, Machiavelli's cynicism and craftiness in Richard III and Montaigne's scepticism in Prince Hamlet. But these are seen through the mirror of Shakespeare's contemporarary people, not in their original meaning. Shakespeare himself could not understand Greek nor Latin well. Living in utter confusion of Elizabethan Renaissance and being dynamically swayed by the thought and religion, traditional and modern, he presents us a new stru
湘南工科大学の論文
1976-03-31

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中村匡克
相模工業大学英語:英文学

エリザベス朝演劇における復讐の諸相 : セネカとマキアヴェリを通して

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