Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World 0198834217, 9780198834212

Table of contents :
Cover
Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Note on the Text
Contents
INTRODUCTION [PROLOGUS]
Introduction: Tragedy’s Intellectual Resources
REFORMATION AND TRAGEDY, c.1550
ERASMUS AND THE RESOURCES OF TRAGEDY
QUID HAC IMAGINE LUGUBRIUS COGITARI POTEST?: MELANCHTHON ON TRAGEDY
TRAGOEDIA SACRA
A PHILOSOPHICAL POETICS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
PART I: [PROTASIS]: TRAGEDY AND THEOLOGY
1: Reformation Tragedy and Revelation David Pareus’ Tragic Typology
DAVID PAREUS, ORIGEN, AND GENRE
TRAGIC STRUCTURE AND RECOGNITION IN PAMMACHIUS AND THE TRAGEDIA
CHRISTUS TRIUMPHANS AND THE TRAGEDY OF ANTICHRIST
“THE TRAGIC FORM OF EACH VISION”
TRAGIC REPETITION
TYPOLOGY AS PROPHECY
2: Lodovico Castelvetro’s Heterodox Poetics: Tragic Accommodation
HERESY IN MODENA
CASTELVETRO’S CONDEMNATION
THE HETERODOXY OF THE POETICA
TRAGIC FORM IN THE POETICA
TRAGEDY AND ACCOMMODATION
3: John Rainolds, Hamlet, and the Anti-Theatrical Aristotle
SPECIES OF FICTION: “THEATER-SIGHTS & STAGE-PLAYES” AND MENDACIA OFFICIOSA
RAINOLDS AND OXFORD ARISTOTELIANISM
SPECTACLE AND RECITATION
ENTER REYNALDO, MENDAX
“THE PLAY’S THE THING”
PART II: [EPITASIS]: TRAGEDY AND THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHY
4: Necessity, Between Tragedy and Predestination: Daniel Heinsius and De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611)
THE ARMINIAN CONTROVERSY AS TRAGEDY
HEINSIUS’ PHILOSOPHICAL DEITY
TRAGEDY AS PHILOSOPHY
PLOT, SPECTACLE, AND STAGE MACHINERY
TRAGEDY NOT MYSTERIOUS
5: Greek Tragedy and Hebrew Antiquity in John Milton’s 1671 Poems
A TRAGIC PAUL: I CORINTHIANS 15:33 AND TEXTUAL SCHOLARSHIP c.1671
FAITH, STUDY, AND GREEK ERUDITION
HEBREW ANTIQUITY IN PARADISE REGAIN’D
TRAGEDY, “ILL IMITATED”
KATHARSIS BEFORE ARISTOTLE
LUSTRATIO AS UNDERSTANDING ACHIEVED BY TRIAL
CONCLUSION: [CATASTROPHE]
Conclusion: Samson Agonistes and the Limits of Tragedy
Bibliography
ABBREVIATIONS FOR FREQUENTLY CITED WORKS
MANUSCRIPTS
PRIMARY SOURCES
SECONDARY SOURCES
Index

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TRAGEDY AS PHILOSOPHY I N   T H E   R E F O R M AT I O N WO R L D

Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World RU S S L E O

1

1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Russ Leo 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949486 ISBN 978–0–19–883421–2 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

For Britt, and for Lucy, sine quibus non

Acknowledgments I began Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World at the Society of Fellows at Princeton University and I am grateful for the extraordinary support and insight the members of that intellectual community proffered as it first took shape. Many thanks to then-Director Susan Stewart in particular, who offered invaluable advice on the project; to fellow Fellows On Barak, Yaacob Dweck, Simon Grote, Joel Lande, and Ricardo Montez; and to Carol Rigolot, Susan Coburn, Lin DeTitta, Cass Garner, and Penny Stone, all of whom supported and encouraged the work. I am especially grateful to Hester Schadee and Mary Harper, moreover, for their wisdom and friendship. Thanks to Princeton University and to my generous colleagues there from whom I have learned much—particularly Joshua Billings, Daphne Brooks, Scott Burnham, Zahid Chaudhary, Anne Cheng, Sarah Chihaya, Maria DiBattista, Jill Dolan, Denis Feeney, Diana Fuss, Simon Gikandi, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Claudia Johnson, Joshua Katz, Sarah Kay, Meredith Martin, Kinohi Nishikawa, Deborah Nord, Jeff Nunokawa, Francois Rigolot, Gayle Salamon, Esther Schor, Alexandra Vazquez, Susan Wolfson, and Michael Wood, all of whom have offered valuable comments, criticism, and support. Special thanks to Josh Kotin, as our daily conversations in the basement were absolutely integral to the development of this work; and to Eduardo Cadava and William Gleason, who showed particular ­support for this project—not only as Head of Wilson College and the Chair of the English Department, respectively, but also as exemplary advocates and interlocutors. Many thanks to Karen Mink, John Lacombe, Tara Broderick, and Pat Guglielmi as well, for making this work possible; and to current and former students who have read drafts of the manuscript or with whom I have discussed this project often, particularly Daniel Blank, Danny Braun, Tom Clayton, Zoe Gibbons, Matthew Harrison, Madeline McMahon, Ali Mctar, Andrew Miller, Matt Rickard, and Steph Pope. I am fortunate to have found such a robust community of medievalists and early modernists at Princeton—particularly Leonard Barkan, Bradin Cormack, Daniel Garber, Sophie Gee, Anthony Grafton, Rhodri Lewis, Sarah Rivett, and Vance Smith, all of whom have supported this work and shaped the course of Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World in innumerable ways. Many thanks to Jeff Dolven, not only for offering great insight on this material but for his kindness and support in general. I owe special debts, moreover, to Nigel Smith and Andrew Cole. If this project has a patron saint it is Nigel who offered crucial encouragement, advice, and criticism at every stage of its development. And conversations with Andrew have been critical to my thinking on not only tragedy and totality but the theoretical import of tragedy at large. Beyond Princeton, I am grateful to those colleagues who offered insight and criticism as this project progressed, particularly Jan Bloemendal, Brian Cummings,

viii Acknowledgments Jane Hwang Degenhardt, Tania Demetriou, Kathy Eden, Stephen Fallon, Tim Harrison, Blair Hoxby, Billy Junker, Laura Lunger Knoppers, Feisal Mohamed, Tanya Pollard, Debora Shuger, Adrian Streete, Rachel Willie, and Adam Zucker. Special thanks to Hannah Crawforth, Micha Lazarus, and Freya Sierhuis who read drafts of chapters and offered canny comments and challenging critiques at every turn. I am very grateful for invitations to present this work, and for the great ­hospitality proffered, at the Centre for Advanced Studies at the Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität München; the Early Modern Seminar in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University; the Five-College Renaissance Seminar at the Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies; the University of New Hampshire English Department; the Medieval-Renaissance Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania; and the University of Virginia. I am thankful, moreover, to librarians and staff members at the following institutions, for their guidance and assistance: the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City; the Bodleian Library at Oxford University; the British Library; the Corpus Christi College Library at Oxford; the Firestone Library at Princeton University; the Folger Shakespeare Library; the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Leiden; and the Department of Special Collections at the University of Amsterdam. Thanks to the University Committee for Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities at Princeton University for supporting much of the research for this book; to the editorial staffs of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Milton Studies, and The Seventeenth Century for permission to reprint sections of earlier articles; and to both the University of Minnesota Press and Verso Books for permission to reproduce the Adorno quote in the epigraph to the Introduction. I am very grateful to the editorial staff at Oxford University Press, particularly Jacqueline Norton, who showed early interest in the project that proved critical to its development, and Eleanor Collins, who offered exemplary guidance and support. Many thanks, moreover, to adroit copy-editor Drew Stanley and to the two anonymous readers who delivered edifying comments as well as constructive criticism on the manuscript. Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World bears little resemblance to my dissertation. Nevertheless, my teachers at Duke University influenced my thinking in immeasurable ways, and I often found myself writing this book with them in mind. Laurie Shannon, Ranjana Khanna, David Aers, Fredric Jameson, Ken Surin, Michael Hardt, and Srinivas Aravamudan were inspiring thinkers and exemplary readers—careful, generous, and discerning. I have so much to thank them for, and hope this book is worthy of them. So too was this project (to say nothing of my life) shaped by my graduate school friends and the work we accomplished together. Our Summer Study Collective remains a high point of my intellectual life, as do our efforts in the Polygraph Editorial Collective; indeed, this book emerges from formative intellectual encounters with Luka Arsenjuk, Nico Baumbach, Abe Geil, Michelle Koerner, Beatriz Llenín-Figueroa, and the Summer Study crew at large as well as with Rachel Price, Alvaro Reyes, and Jennifer Rhee. Among these comrades, I reserve special thanks for Alex Ruch and Cord Whitaker, for their friendship and acumen.

Acknowledgments

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I am especially grateful to my family—to my brother, Dan Leo; to my grandparents Lucille Markham, Milton Markham, Corine Leo, and Russell Leo; to James Rusert and Diane Rusert; and to my mother and father, Debra and Russell Leo, Jr. I thank them for their patience, love, and support. And Mom and Dad in particular. I often think that my scholarly ambitions are at base desperate attempts to reclaim the seat between them on the banana couch, to listen intently as they read aloud the names of dinosaurs. I am most grateful, finally, to my comrade Britt Rusert, a singular friend and collaborator with whom it is my greatest joy to share a life. This book is for her and for our daughter Lucy, who offer perspective and hope for a world without tragedy.

Note on the Text Material in the Introduction appeared first in “Scripture and Tragedy in the Reformation,” The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Bible, ed. Kevin Kileen, Helen Smith, and Rachel Willie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 498–517. A brief section of Chapter  4 will appear in “Herod and the Furies: Daniel Heinsius and the Representation of Affect in Tragedy,” forthcoming in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Much of Chapter  5 appeared first in “Paul’s Euripides, Greek Tragedy and Hebrew Antiquity in Paradise Regain’d,” The Seventeenth Century 31.2 (2016): 191–213. Sections of the Conclusion appeared first in “Milton’s Aristotelian Experiments: Tragedy, Lustratio, and ‘Secret refreshings’ in Samson Agonistes (1671),” Milton Studies 52 (2011): 221–52.

Contents I N T RO D U C T I O N [ P R O LO G U S ] Introduction: Tragedy’s Intellectual Resources

Reformation and Tragedy, c.1550 Erasmus and the Resources of Tragedy Quid hac imagine lugubrius cogitari potest?: Melanchthon on Tragedy Tragoedia Sacra A Philosophical Poetics Dramatis Personae

3 10 14 21 29 31 38

I .   [ P R OTA S I S ] . T R A G E D Y A N D T H E O L O G Y 1. Reformation Tragedy and Revelation: David Pareus’ Tragic Typology David Pareus, Origen, and Genre Tragic Structure and Recognition in Pammachius and the Tragedia Christus Triumphans and the Tragedy of Antichrist “The Tragic Form of Each Vision” Tragic Repetition Typology as Prophecy 2. Lodovico Castelvetro’s Heterodox Poetics: Tragic Accommodation Heresy in Modena Castelvetro’s Condemnation The Heterodoxy of the Poetica Tragic Form in the Poetica Tragedy and Accommodation 3. John Rainolds, Hamlet, and the Anti-Theatrical Aristotle Species of Fiction: “Theater-sights & Stage-playes” and Mendacia officiosa Rainolds and Oxford Aristotelianism Spectacle and Recitation Enter Reynaldo, Mendax “The play’s the thing”

45 49 53 61 65 73 77 81 83 90 93 100 106 119 125 133 144 154 158

xiv Contents I I .  [ E P I TA S I S ] . T R A G E D Y A N D T H E L I M I T S OF PHILOSOPHY 4. Necessity, Between Tragedy and Predestination: Daniel Heinsius and De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611) The Arminian Controversy as Tragedy Heinsius’ Philosophical Deity Tragedy as Philosophy Plot, Spectacle, and Stage Machinery Tragedy Not Mysterious

167 173 179 183 190 197

5. Greek Tragedy and Hebrew Antiquity in John Milton’s 1671 Poems A Tragic Paul: I Corinthians 15:33 and Textual Scholarship c.1671 Faith, Study, and Greek Erudition Hebrew Antiquity in Paradise Regain’d Tragedy, “Ill imitated” Katharsis before Aristotle Lustratio as Understanding Achieved by Trial

207 211 216 222 226 227 237

C O N C LU S I O N [ C ATA S T R O P H E ] Conclusion: Samson Agonistes and the Limits of Tragedy Bibliography

Index

243 257 289

I N T RO D U C T I O N [P R O LO G U S ]

Introduction Tragedy’s Intellectual Resources Gorgias called tragedy a deception wherein he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived. Plutarch, How the Young Man Should Study Poetry1 Only the aesthetically completely articulated art work offers an image of a non-mutilated reality, and thus of freedom. The art work that has been completely articulated through the most extreme mastery of the material, a work that by means of that mastery escapes most completely from simple organic existence, is once again closest to the organic. Theodor W. Adorno, Vers une musique informelle (1960)2

In his storied vernacular commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics, Lodovico Castelvetro offers a striking and counterintuitive example of poetic genius. He recounts the discovery in Renaissance Rome of an ancient marble statue of a river deity, largely intact save for its beard. A seemingly minor detail, the missing beard proved distracting enough to prevent its admirers from imagining the statue in its original and complete form. The gathered Romans quarreled about the length and shape of the beard; some fragments on the face suggested that it once extended from the jaw to the navel, while other fragments higher on the hirsute god’s chest implied that the beard ended there. The arguments continued until one of the admirers—none other than Michelangelo Buonarroti, whom Castelvetro calls “a sculptor of very rare genius”—requested clay with which to reconstruct the beard, “making it of a size commensurate with the dimensions of the part preserved.”3 Demonstrating his artistic expertise, Michelangelo ostensibly recreated the missing beard, attaching the clay to the statue’s chin, stretching it to its navel, illustrating in practice how the various fragments connected, “how the missing beard had been shaped and knotted.”4 Only with Michelangelo’s guidance were the admirers able to comprehend the complete statue, bringing their dispute to an authoritative end. 1  Plutarch [1927], 78–9. Daniel Heinsius included a Latin translation of Plutarch’s Greek in his 1611 edition of Aristotle’s Poetics, immediately before the text of his treatise De Tragoediae Constitutione: “GORGIAS TRAGOEDIAM ESSE FRAUDEM DICEBAT, QUA QUI FEFELLISSET, IUSTIOR ESSET, QUAM QUI NON FEFELLISSET: ET QUI FALSUS ESSET, SAPIENTIOR, QUAM QUI QUI [sic] FALSUS NON ESSET.” See H1611, 9. 2  Adorno [1978], 500; [1998], 318–19. I reproduce the translation in Adorno [1989], xvii. 4  LC, 104; Castelvetro [1570], 119v. 3  LC, 103–4; and Castelvetro [1570], 119v.

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Prologus: Introduction

All of those present, Castelvetro confirms, judged him “a sculptor superior in discernment to any other who would have made a whole beard conforming to his own idea of what it should be, without regard for the remaining pieces of the original one.”5 Castelvetro celebrates the method by which Michelangelo reconstructed the statue, his treatment of evidence and attention to detail gleaned from his own skill as a sculptor. A less capable sculptor might have taken recourse to fancy, shaping the new beard as he saw fit, without criteria, showing little or no fidelity to the material at hand. Michelangelo, however, reconstituted the statue as it was, based on probability, verisimilitude, evidence, and technique. Michelangelo enabled the ­admirers to grasp an otherwise fragmentary statue as a totality. This, Castelvetro argues, is the forensic or inferential work of tragedy, albeit in action and enacted language rather than clay and stone.6 Michelangelo is like the tragedian who, in his attention to plot, lays bare the forms of causality by which seemingly disparate events are connected, drawing conclusions based on probability and necessity—Aristotle’s τό εἰκός and ἡ ἀνάγκη, respectively, which Castelvetro translates as la verisimilitudine and la necessita.7 The fragments of the beard are like the actions, mores, and affects that comprise the tragedy; Michelangelo proceeds methodically, with reference to nature and necessity, and gives the work consistency and unity. The task of the tragic poet is similar—namely, to compose complete plots that unfold “by necessity or probability” [ἢ ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἢ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς, 1452a.20], entailing a thorough understanding of definition, relation, and causality. Myths or histories may provide details to guide the poet, but Castelvetro nevertheless underlines the philosophical province of tragedy, the degree to which tragedy emerges in the Poetics as an exacting treatment of causality, action, and form, offering insight into definition, demonstration, and interpretation. For Aristotle and his most faithful early modern readers, tragedies do not merely depict things noble, doleful, or horrific but also “the kinds of things that might occur and are possible in terms of probability or necessity” [1451a.36–8; original ­emphasis]—that is to say, tragedy trades in the “universal” [καθόλου, 1451b.8], directing audiences to consider the rationality of the natural world. Identifying poetics as an art rather than a matter of divine inspiration or fury, Castelvetro demonstrates its proximity not only to rhetoric but also to dialectic and philosophy. Insofar as ­tragedy deals with unity and induction, it shares resources with dialectic and belongs among the works of the Organon; where tragedies foreground probability and necessity in nature, moreover, they duly share resources with physics and ­metaphysics.8 Tragedy 5  LC, 104 [my emphasis]; Castelvetro [1570], 119v. 6  Castelvetro presents Aristotelian tragedy as a critical resource aiding in the work of demonstration and dialectic—that is to say, in the rational work of definition and proof that Aristotle outlines across the Organon. See Aristotle [1938], 204–9, 236–9; and [1960], 272–5. Tragedy is thus put to forensic ends—not only in the rhetorical sense that Lorna Hutson and Quentin Skinner explore in their exemplary studies of early modern drama, attending to legal or judicial matters of argument and evidence, but also in a more modern sense: tragedy is a “forensic” art whereby audiences consider the probable or necessary conditions by which a plot unfolds, yielding a detailed understanding of cause and effect. Hutson addresses Castelvetro briefly in Circumstantial Shakespeare apropos of his comments on episodes in the Poetics. See Hutson [2014], 20–2; [2007]; and Skinner [2014]. 7  AP, 60–3. Castelvetro [1570], 101v. 8  On the distinctions between dialectic per se and causality in physics and metaphysics see Evans [1977], 17–30; Lear [1988], 209–31, 247–65; and Sorabji [1980], 26–44.



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is directly related to the tasks of ἀπόδειξις and διαλεκτική that Aristotle treats across the Organon—namely, to demonstrative and dialectical forms of reasoning that explore the terms of probability and necessity in arguments and, in general, in nature.9 Like dialectic, tragedy deals directly with truth and knowledge. Indeed, Aristotle’s definition of the dialectical problem in the Topica might also serve as a précis for any number of tragedies: “investigation[s] leading either to the choice and avoidance or to truth and knowledge, either by itself or as an aid to the solution of some other such problem” [104b.1–3].10 As Kathy Eden illustrates in her magnificent study Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition, moreover, tragedy emerges in antiquity as a science of proof, its ends forensic.11 As the mimesis of an action, tragedy trains our attention to cause and effect, to actions voluntary or involuntary. It asks audiences to think critically about what is possible, probable, and credible. Tragedians use their art as Michelangelo employs sculpture in Castelvetro’s example, to forensic ends. Tragedy affords audiences the resources to comprehend action, if not nature itself, as a totality.12 This is the meaning of the gnomic claim that Plutarch attributes to Gorgias in How the Young Man Should Study Poetry: “Gorgias called tragedy a deception [ἀπάτην] wherein he who deceives is more honest than he who does not deceive, and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived.”13 The tragedian’s “deception”—that is, the tragic plot—lays bare fundamental universal truths concerning reason and relation as well as action and agency in nature. Insofar as the tragic “deception” involves a mimesis of an action grounded in probability or necessity, it is “δικαιότερος”—“more just,” “more honest,” “more fitting,” even “more real”—than other less philosophical and less precise forms of art or language. A well-constructed tragic “deception” is a mimesis of nature; the observer who is “deceived”—that is to say, immersed in the work—is in fact “wiser” for the deception, feeling and comprehending according to nature. Plutarch’s Gorgias does more than defend tragedy. He lays claim to its dignity and utility, pointing subtly to its privileged relationship to logic and nature. The tragedian does not merely employ fictions to teach and to delight. Tragedy’s edifying ends do not merely justify the deceptive means. The “deception” itself approximates reality in a profound philosophical way.

9  Aristotle [1960], 272–5. 10  Aristotle [1960], 298–9. On causality in particular in early modern philosophy see Ashworth [1988]; and Ott [2009]. 11  Eden [1986], 7–24. 12  Preoccupied with coherence and totality, many of the tragedians I treat in this study share the interest in totality that Martin Jay traces in Marxism and Totality, even if they marshal their knowledge to remarkably different ends. Nevertheless, other figures—those for whom tragic insight into totality poses more difficult questions concerning unintelligible aspects of grace or divinity—come closer to what Fredric Jameson describes as “the philosophically correct use of the concept of totality, as something that by definition we cannot know rather than as some privileged form of epistemological authority some people are trying to keep for themselves, with a view toward enslaving others.” Far more, however, endorse a notion of totality wherein the study of causality or action at work in a tragedy might indeed be “redefined,” as Jameson says, as an investigation of “the conditions of possibility.” See Jay [1984]; and Jameson [1994], 69, xv. 13  Plutarch [1927], 78–9.

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Prologus: Introduction

Across his commentary Castelvetro foregrounds tragedy’s philosophical purview. Tragedy is not philosophy per se but it is nevertheless philosophical—much more so than history, comedy, epic, or those spectacular dramatic entertainments which are often identified as tragedies. This strict Aristotelian vision of tragedy, however, was seldom realized among Castelvetro’s contemporaries. Nor was it ­necessarily relevant. Different theaters and scenes of production had their own rules and standards, their own criteria for failure and success. The philosophical vision of the Poetics is only part of the larger history of tragedy in early modernity, not necessarily applicable to the myriad humanist tragedies written under the influence of Seneca and the Greek tragedians Sophocles and Euripides or to the influential varieties of vernacular tragedy for which the age is known—the work of such luminaries as Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Robert Garnier. What follows is not a comprehensive history of early modern tragedy but rather an account of those influential poetic projects that recruited tragedy for philosophy and theology, critical contributions to early modern poetics and Reformation. Castelvetro, David Pareus, John Rainolds, Daniel Heinsius, and John Milton discover in tragedy a dynamic language with which to plumb notions of probability, necessity, and credibility with respect to action human and divine. Although these figures may seem marginal to the history of tragedy, they all contributed much to a burgeoning Reformed poetics which in turn shaped Neoclassical poetics at large. Save for Milton, however, their simultaneous contributions to theology and poetics have largely gone unrecognized, primarily because they exploit Aristotelian distinctions between tragedy and spectacle, wresting tragedy from the sites of performance with which scholars of early modern literature are generally familiar. Put simply, the figures to which I attend in this book affirm the distinction between tragedy and the materials and techniques of performance, betraying their investment in the former at the expense of the latter; spectacle and stage-playing are (at best) means of accommodation that compromise tragedy’s precision or (at worst) deleterious distortions that confound audiences and mark the limits of reason. The figures that populate this book are certainly invested in tragedy but not necessarily interested in its dramatic performance; in fact, many of them marshal accounts of tragedy to deliberately anti-theatrical ends. This is a history of tragedy, not drama or performance. Most modern readers will readily accept the close association between tragedy and philosophy—a testament, really, to the wide influence of German intellectuals writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Hölderlin, among ­others, who developed theses on freedom, history, and ethical life directly in relation to tragedy ancient and modern. Tragedy featured prominently in the development of aesthetic philosophy across the latter half of the eighteenth century. So too was tragedy crucial to German Idealism. In On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life, Dennis J. Schmidt isolates Hegel’s in particular as “the first thoroughly speculative theory of tragedy,” drawing “the idea of the tragic, which presents a conception of life as torn, conflicted, and agonized” together with “the idea of speculation, which seeks to grasp all things, in their mutuality and belonging



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together, that is, as a unity.”14 Hegel thus discovers the “highest form” of “­conflicted unity” in tragedy, “in the operations of the tragic.”15 Schmidt, Blair Hoxby, and  Joshua Billings alike demonstrate how this particular philosophical fixation with tragedy marks a break with earlier poetics.16 The Idealists’ “renewal of the questions of Greek tragedy is equally its reinvention.”17 This “reinvention” of Greek ­tragedy, in turn, applies to tragedy in Latin as well as the varieties of vernacular tragedy and trauerspiel that emerged across early modernity. Modern readers often assume, then, that tragedy is most salient to philosophy in its depiction of contradiction; a modern philosophy of tragedy—or, rather, a modern philosophy of the tragic—attends to conflict and to irreconcilable elements of life in the world. For Hegel and his sharpest interlocutors, tragedies enable us to see what is tragic about human life and history, foregrounding problems of freedom and necessity, self-consciousness and self-interest, that challenge our ability to grasp disparate aspects of life as a totality.18 Peter Szondi underlines this fundamental change at the outset of his 1961 Essay on the Tragic: “Since Aristotle, there has been a poetics of tragedy,” but “Only since Schelling has there been a philosophy of the tragic.”19 While it is beyond the scope of this book to determine whether Szondi is right or wrong, Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World discovers continuities that he tacitly denies and obscures—namely, how early modern poetics of tragedy were indeed preoccupied with questions of causality, freedom, and necessity that traversed boundaries between art and life.20 To the letter, tragedy was indeed related 14  Schmidt [2001], 89. 15  Schmidt [2001], 90. 16 In What Was Tragedy? Theory and the Early Modern Canon, Hoxby develops a thorough composite early modern poetics of tragedy that is distinct from enduring Romantic and Idealist assumptions about tragedy. In Genealogy of the Tragic: Greek Tragedy and German Philosophy, Billings gives a rich account of nineteenth-century studies of tragedy’s origins and antiquity as well as its importance in the development of German Idealism. See Hoxby [2015], 3–56; Billings [2014]. 17  Schmidt [2001], 77 [original emphasis]. 18  Houlgate [2007]. 19  Among the many differences between early modern, eighteenth-century, and Idealist approaches to tragedy, I understand Szondi’s distinction between a poetics of tragedy and a philosophy of the tragic primarily as a matter of reflection. Philosophers of the tragic relate the study of tragic form to life itself—that is, to life in its tragic character—as a conflict of freedoms or interests that remain irreconcilable absent fundamental transformations of ethical life. The early moderns, however (who, along with late antique and medieval thinkers of tragedy, occupy a precarious place between Szondi’s two poles: Aristotle and Schelling), do not share the later assumptions about aesthetics and history. Early modern poetics may have been attuned to conflicts between discrete ethical powers or ἔθη in tragedy, or to the contradictions and irreconcilable elements that are constitutive of tragic plots. But they are neither “conscious” (in the sense that matters to Szondi) of the historicity of tragedy or consciousness itself, nor are they able to articulate the precise relation between tragic form and tragic aspects of life. Even when they recognize the continuities between art and life, when they call tragedy a “mirror for magistrates” or muse that “all the world’s a stage,” the early moderns seldom understood these as properly philosophical reflections, in any speculative sense. Szondi [2002], 1–2 [my emphasis]. 20  Let two notes suffice here, to frame the complexity of the issue at hand. First, if Szondi identifies Schelling’s as a path-breaking theory of the tragic based on the assumption that he ranks among the first to focus not on “the effect that the tragic has on the audience but on the phenomenon of the tragic itself,” this is a rather crude summary of late-antique, medieval, and early modern theses on tragedy, so many of which attend to the tragic in terms of “life and its presentation in art” (even if “art” means something fundamentally different for pre-aesthetic readers). Nevertheless, Szondi’s thesis proves intuitive once he underlines the importance of freedom in Schelling’s approach to tragedy, where the tragic is a “dialectical phenomenon” through which freedom, “now at odds with itself, becomes its own adversary.” See Szondi [2002], 7, 10.

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to “philosophy” insofar as tragedians attended to dialectic—to definition, causality, necessity, probability, possibility, reason, and inference. This determination of philosophy may seem limited to modern readers who primarily associate tragedy, in its depictions of the passions, with philosophical anthropology or approaches to the human mind.21 Early modern readers undoubtedly turned to tragedy to understand the nature of discrete emotions or elements of human psychology. As Hoxby illustrates, many developed detailed poetics of tragedy to these ends.22 But Castelvetro, Pareus, Rainolds, Heinsius, and Milton, along with other reformers and Reformers who recruited tragedy and poetics of tragedy to understand providence and history—or, as Hegel puts it, “the Divine . . . as it enters the world and individual action” [das Göttliche . . . wie es in die Welt, in das individuelle Handeln eintritt]—are much more invested in tragic form and its dialectical implications.23 For this reason I generally use the term “philosophy” to refer to the intersection of dialectic with poetry and rhetoric, and with occasional reference to metaphysics and theology, eschewing detailed discussions of philosophical anthropology, the passions, the human condition, and early modern subjectivity in general.24 Aristotle claims in the Poetics that “poetry is more philosophical and more elevated than history, since poetry relates more of the universal,” more of “the kinds of things which it suits a certain kind of person to say or do, in terms of probability or necessity” [1451b.5–9].25 And while he does not directly conflate tragedy with philosophy, he nevertheless foregrounds the deep connections between these two distinct intellectual enterprises. When Aristotle does draw tragedy and philosophy together, he emphasizes causality, agency, and aetiology in the plot, aspects of logic or dialectic to which he attends directly in the Organon. This certainly falls within the purview of what early moderns called “philosophy,” particularly the early modern poets, critics, and theologians to whom I attend across this book, all of whom were taken by critiques of scholastic authority but nonetheless familiar with (even committed to) versions of Aristotelianism.26 The invocation of philosophical poetry in the Poetics is crucial to their theses on tragedy, even as they contest the meaning and limits of “philosophy,” blurring the boundaries between poetry, philosophy, and theology as well as between discrete philosophical modes, i.e. dialectic, physics, and metaphysics. Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World thus recovers key attempts to affirm the philosophical province of tragedy, often in contrast to theater and 21  On the emotions and their place in the history of the philosophy of mind see Knuuttila [2014]; and Alanen [2014]. 22  Hoxby [2015], 85–99, 102–8.  23  Although I want to suggest continuities between these early modern theses on tragedy and later Idealist approaches, I mean “dialectic” in an Aristotelian sense here, which J. D. G. Evans examines in great detail in Aristotle’s Concept of Dialectic. Hegel [1975], 1195; [1971], 308; Evans [1977], 5. 24  There are many detailed and sophisticated studies of the passions and their place in early modern philosophy, particularly philosophical anthropology. See, for instance, James [1997]; Des Chene [2012]; and Knuuttila [2012]. 25  AP, 58–61 [my emphasis]. 26  As Luca Bianchi suggests, interpretations and translations of the Poetics illustrate how crude distinctions between “humanism” and “scholasticism” fail to account for the variety and vitality of Aristotelianism in early modernity. Vasoli [1988], 64–71; Bianchi [2007], 64–7.



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­performance, in Reformed debates between the 1570s and the 1630s. The work begins with the Reformed theologian David Pareus and crucial tragoediae sacrae— namely, Thomas Naogeorgus’ Pammachius (1538), Francesco Negri’s Tragedia intitolata Libero Arbitrio (1546), and John Foxe’s Christus Triumphans (1556)—to which Pareus turned in the 1570s and 1580s as he began his studies of the Apocalypse. Arguing that God delivered the Revelation to John in the form of a tragedy, Pareus, who had little truck with philology or classical poetics, traces the origins of the genre to Scripture itself, laying claim to tragedy’s prophetic and literary resources in the process. When Pareus published his commentary on Revelation in 1618, he introduced Reformation Europe at large to a form of tragedy that rendered history intelligible as a totality and the experience of Revelation meaningful and palpable to his contemporaries. While Pareus turned to Scripture for his model of tragedy, however, Castelvetro turned to Aristotle’s Poetics, mining the ancient text with an eye to its meaning and utility in Reformed milieux. And while Pareus said virtually nothing about performance or spectacle, Castelvetro recognized the degree to which the precise dialectical resources of tragedy might be accommodated to audiences by way of performance. Castelvetro emphatically recuperates Aristotelian tragedy to Reformation ends. So too does the Oxford Puritan John Rainolds. Yet the Aristotle to which he lays claim across the 1580s and 1590s is deliberately anti-theatrical. Castelvetro defends spectacle and stage-playing in their capacity to accommodate tragedy’s philosophical insights; Rainolds, however, emphasizes how performance perverts and obscures otherwise rational insights, blunting otherwise exacting critical tools. Daniel Heinsius’ tragic experiments, moreover—namely, his commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics, De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611), as well as his own biblical tragedy Herodes Infanticida—presented tragedy as a rational alternative to theological speculation. Tragedy, Heinsius affirms, enables audiences to understand complex notions of agency human and divine, empowering audiences to discover when and where theological solutions—miracles and dei ex machinis—are necessary to account for cause and effect in nature. Like Pareus, Castelvetro, Rainolds, and a host of sacred tragedians, Heinsius turns to tragedy to address theological questions—in this case, to understand the determinations of freedom and necessity at stake in the Arminian Controversy, in the intense debates concerning providence, predestination, and human freedom that practically defined Reformed theology in the early seventeenth century. For each of these figures, a rarefied philosophical notion of tragedy is crucial to theological debate. In this sense Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World traces the emergence and development of influential Reformation theses on tragedy, illustrating how Reformation takes shape in poetic as well as theological, devotional, and political terms. This is evident in the work’s conclusion as well, in two treatments of Miltonic tragedy. In Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes, John Milton at once lays claim to tragedy’s sacred origins and points to its intellectual limits; Milton recruits tragedy for theology but also exploits assumptions about tragic precision and the apprehension of totality to foreground the illegibility—even irrationality— of the Spirit in human history. Pareus, Castelvetro, Rainolds, Heinsius, and company

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seize tragedy for the Reformation, emphasizing its philosophical province, rendering Scripture, nature, and divinity intelligible in tragic terms. As much as Milton is devoted to this vision of Reformation tragedy, so too is he its most thorough critic. Milton’s idiosyncratic tragic experiments belong to a tradition of Reformation tragedy that I uncover across this book. Long before the publication of his 1671 poems, in the generations preceding Pareus’ initial lectures on Revelation or Castelvetro’s first encounter with the Poetics, reformers and Reformers alike turned to tragedy in the pursuit of faith and truth. My task in the remainder of this Introduction is to deliver the Prologus to the work, to illustrate how and why key sixteenth-century theologians thought with tragedy before 1550, how they ­simultaneously shaped poetics and the grammars of Reformation, how tragedy emerged as a philosophical and theological resource as well as a theatrical form. The influential Reformer Martin Bucer’s treatment of tragedy in De Regno Christi (1550) proves a useful point of departure here as Bucer, writing in the wake of Desiderius Erasmus and Philipp Melanchthon, deftly draws together major developments in tragedy and poetics as they relate directly to ongoing projects of reform. Bucer’s is a telling account of tragedy and its Reformation province circa 1550. R E F O R M AT I O N A N D T R A G E D Y, c . 1 5 5 0 In his remarkable work De Regno Christi, dedicated to the English King Edward VI, Bucer outlines at length a series of measures intended to advance the Reformation far beyond its nascent state. Included among these reforms is a defense of honesti ludi, or “honest pastimes”—activities crucial to “the civil education of youth, the suppression of idleness, and the introduction and increase of honest crafts [artibus] and business affairs [negotiis].”27 A wide variety of games, shows, spectacles, and forms of play—including song, dance, and gymnastics—are ­ eople licensed and encouraged, provided they are reverent. Honest pastimes incite p to piety, touching their religious spirits in the same way that the poet and king David was touched in II Samuel 6:12–15, “dancing before the Ark of the Lord” in a faithful celebration of the goodness of God.28 Bucer classifies such ludi as forms of praise and, following Psalm 33, affirms the degree to which “Praise becomes the righteous” [rectos decet laus]; moreover, insofar as “we belong to Christ, if he is our life, if eternal salvation is from him and about him, every cause of joy and gladness ought to be ours.”29 Bucer’s is thus a thorough endorsement of ludi, challenging enduring assumptions about recreation and “play” in Reformation milieux. This is especially true of Bucer’s comments on drama, his clear articulation of the relationship between Scripture and dramatic genre (namely, comedy and ­tragedy). The majority of De Honestis Ludis is devoted to comedy and tragedy— both of which are approved, provided that they are composed by “devout and wise men experienced in the Kingdom of Christ.”30 Drama is not only “a useful form 27  B, 354; Bucer [1955], 260.    28  B, 347. 29  B, 348; Bucer [1955], 259, 253, 254. 30  B, 349.



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of entertainment, honorable and contributing toward an increase of piety”; comedy and tragedy are also lively media to present “on the stage the plans, actions, and events of mankind.”31 Bucer’s is primarily a defense of drama on the grounds that comedies and tragedies traffic in the affections and thus might be exploited for the reformation of the desires and passions of mankind. Sacred drama is at once instructive and able to touch these affections (ranging from fear to joy), seizing on poetry’s capacity to delight as well as teach. Comedians and tragedians alike depict “the crimes of reprobate men” in order to emphasize “a certain terror of divine judgment and horror of sin”; moreover, “when pious and good actions are shown,” we see the very definition of faith: “a happy, secure, and confident sense of divine mercy, but moderate and diffident as regards the self, and a joyful trust in God and his promises, with holy and spiritual pleasure in doing good.”32 In Bucer’s account, these pious affects or “Affectus pii” are expressed most clearly in sacred drama.33 Bucer’s comments on comedy are telling. Drawing upon the archive of antique comedy, he censures contemporary works that “miss that acumen and wit and pleasantness of speech which people admire in Aristophanes, Terence, and the tales of Plautus.”34 As comedies show things “common and ordinary” [communium et vulgarium], moreover, the repertoire for comic fabulae—stories of things “common and ordinary”—is very broad; “apt and pious poets,” Bucer insists, are able to “produce many such things from other stories and from occurrences in daily life.”35 He opposes this directly to tragedy, which presents things “unique and eliciting admiration.”36 The major events and figures of Scripture are the stuff of tragedy. Personae like Abraham and Lot “are heroic figures appropriate to tragedy,” but “the quarrels that arose among their shepherds were common and ordinary.”37 The doings of servants or shepherds, the unnamed kindred of the Patriarchs, are comic affairs, just as temptation (the suggestio Satanae), corruption, disease, and the weaknesses of human nature are appropriately comic topics. Bucer duly illustrates how comedies frame and enliven domestic and familial aspects of Scripture, from Abraham’s humble willingness to resolve a conflict with his nephew Lot (Genesis 13:5–12) to the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 24:2–67) to Jacob’s service to his uncle Laban (Genesis 28:10–33:20). Jacob’s story is particularly illustrative. While Bucer concedes that there is certainly “a tragic aspect to this story in the apparition of the Lord on the way and the struggle with the angel,” such comic episodes ultimately express the everyday “consolations of God” evident in Scripture, and common to all believers—pleasures derived from modesty, marriage, friendship, and the like.38 The story of Jacob and Laban is comic insofar as Jacob’s life was “enriched . . . because of the faithful service he performed for his uncle,” a quotidian pleasure available to all believers and, hence, comic.39

31  B, 349. 32  B, 351; Bucer [1955], 257. For a comparable and concurrent definition of faith see Book III of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559). Calvin [1960], 542–92. 33  Bucer [1955], 257. 34  B, 352. 35  B, 349, 351; Bucer [1955], 256. 36  B, 349; Bucer [1955], 254. 37  B, 349; Bucer [1955], 254. 38  B, 349–50; Bucer [1955], 255–6. 39  B, 350.

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Tragedy, however, has a more apparent and immediate relationship to Scripture. According to Bucer: The Scriptures everywhere offer an abundant supply of material for tragedies, in almost all the stories of the holy patriarchs, kings, prophets, and apostles, from the time of Adam, the first parent of mankind. For these stories are filled with divine and heroic personages, emotions, customs, actions, and also events which turned out contrary to what was expected, which Aristotle calls reversals [περιπετείας].40

These initial comments tell us much about tragedy and its theological applications as well as the place of drama in the devotional lives of Reformed audiences. Notably, Bucer’s determination of tragedy is Aristotelian. Not only does he understand tragedy as contributing “toward a correction of morals and a pious orientation in life,” he also experiments with technical terms from the Poetics and their religious province (for instance, περιπετείας [peripeteia] and recognition [the Greek ἀναγνώρισις, usually Latinized as agnitio or agnosco]).41 Bucer transports informed humanist investigations of antique poetics to Scripture, expressing his admiration for “the gravity, cleverness, and elegance of dialogue of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca” as well as his familiarity with an emergent commentary tradition devoted to tragedy in and beyond the Poetics.42 Indeed, he asserts that Scripture is in fact more appropriate to the project of tragedy than “the godless fables and stories of the pagans.”43 Again, there is a distinctly Aristotelian strain in Bucer’s treatment of tragedy. Not only does he emphasize fear and horror (he is silent on pity), as well as a rational awe proper to tragedy and Scripture alike, he is duly critical of excessive spectacle and histrionics. Bucer asks that “nothing shallow or histrionic is admitted in the acting,” building on the Aristotelian dictum: “­spectacle is emotionally potent but falls quite outside the art and is not integral to poetry” [1450b.16–17].44 Moreover, in a complex comment on the proper materia of representation, Bucer asks that a tragedy reveal, in the examination of sacred matters, “not so much the actualities and activities of men [res ipsae et hominum actiones] and their feelings and troubles [affectus et purturbationes], but rather their habits and dispositions [mores et ingenia].”45 What is at stake here is precisely the Aristotelian definition of poetry, more philosophical than history insofar as the poet relates universals whereas the historian narrates particular details. At this point in De Regno Christi, Bucer charges sacred tragedy with a similar focus on “sacred matters” as a genus rather than discrete figures or events, on their own; he emphasizes patterns, mores, habits, and dispositions, stressing continuities and universals across Scripture, rather than the affairs, actions, feelings, and troubles of individual men. There is a principle of accommodation at work here. Where personae and events in Scripture are recognizably distant from modern audiences, tragedy bridges that gap by emphasizing more general categories—the mores of a particular people, for instance. 40  B, 351; Bucer [1955], 257. 41  B, 349; Bucer [1955], 255. 42  B, 352. 43  B, 351; Bucer [1955], 257. 44  B, 352; Bucer [1955], 258. See also AP, 72–5 (Poetics 1453b.1–10). 45  B, 352; Bucer [1955], 258. I have altered Pauck and Larkin’s translation of mores et ingenia from “morals and characters” to “habits and dispositions.”



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Bucer claims that David, a Palestinian [Palestinus], was “of a nation far more emotional and uninhibited [pathetici atque commobiles] than our European people.”46 As tragedy draws our attention to mores, moreover, so too does it enable us to identify continuities across time and culture, pointing to universal aspects of human life and nature that are not bound to history or geography. Even as tragedians should avoid representing “common” or “ordinary” figures or events they should nevertheless strive to depict the universal. Indeed, Bucer develops a poetics in order to discover and convey the universal import of Scripture—a task, he claims, to which tragedy is uniquely suited. Aristotelian t­ ragedy in particular enables this in its focus on necessity and probability: “With character, precisely as in the structure of events, one should always seek necessity and probability—so that for such a person to say or do such things is necessary or probable, and the sequence of events is also necessary and probable” [1454a.32–6]. Following this principle, the poet can frame Scriptural characters and events in a way that communicates their applicability to modern audiences. This, together with the theatrical appeal to the affections—that which “arouses the spectators to an eager imitation,” which “strengthens them in their detestation of [sin] and s­timulates them to a vigilant avoidance of it”—closes the historical and cultural gaps by emphasizing the universal and enduring qualities of saintly life, the meaning of Scripture in toto.47 Two crucial developments come to a head here in Bucer’s 1550 treatment of tragedy. First, his remarks reflect the degree to which tragedy had already emerged as a theological resource among sixteenth-century reformers and Reformers alike. He was undoubtedly influenced by dramata sacra produced in the wake of the Reformation—works by Thomas Naogeorgus, John Bale, and George Buchanan, among so many others—as well as path-breaking scholarship on tragedy’s history and utility, on poetics itself.48 Second, Bucer testifies to the fact that in this same period diverse readers across Europe enjoyed unprecedented access to Aristotle’s theses on tragedy in the Poetics. Bucer’s treatment of tragedy is remarkably Aristotelian. These developments—specifically, the preoccupation among reformers and Reformers with tragedy and the gradual introduction of exacting and sophisticated commentaries on the Poetics—converge in De Regno Christi in 1550. In what follows I will discuss key developments that shaped Bucer’s treatment of tragedy and which set to work the tragic experiments I trace across Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World. First, I illustrate how the influential ­theologians Desiderius Erasmus and Philipp Melanchthon imported poetics into theological study, how they mined antique works for exegetical and philosophical tools and recruited tragedy in particular to theological ends.49 As reformers and Reformers 46  B, 347–8; Bucer [1955], 253. 47  B, 352; Bucer [1955], 258. 48  I address the importance and popularity of dramata sacra in Leo [2015]. 49  Their involvement, however, was hardly uncontroversial. As both Erasmus and Melanchthon were soon added to a growing list of prohibited authors during the early years of the Reformation, even their propaedeutic texts and scholarly translations were contraband, subject to scrutiny and censorship. In a survey of Northern humanist works that circulated in Counter-Reformation Italy, for instance, John Tedeschi introduces a surviving copy of a 1539 edition of Terence containing annotations by Erasmus and Melanchthon; a crafty censor amended the title page, replacing their names with a Latin tag, “praedictorum auctorum”—that is, “the already named authors”—referring the reader to

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turned to tragedy across the first half of the sixteenth century, I trace the simultaneous emergence of Reformed poetics and original works of tragoedia sacra. Finally, I foreground the texts of Aristotle’s Poetics and their early modern readers to examine the bases of Bucer’s assumptions on tragedy as well as the assumptions that motivate the figures in this study. In his treatment of tragedy, Bucer illustrates just how important the form had become among diverse reformers and Reformers by 1550, underscoring the theological and philosophical purchase of tragedy and the Poetics in and beyond dramatic practice. With these developments in mind, I look forward to philosophical and theological determinations in tragedy after 1550, to works that fall within the scope of Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World and  which signal important transformations in tragedy and poetics into the seventeenth century. E R A S M U S A N D T H E R E S O U RC E S O F T R A G E D Y Erasmus initially turned to tragedy to understand the language of Scripture. His Latin translations of Euripides’ Hecuba and Iphigenia at Aulis, initially printed by Josse Bade at Paris in 1506 and again (in a corrected edition) by Aldo Manuzio at Venice in 1507, make this connection explicit. In his prefatory address to William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of Oxford University, Erasmus identified Euripides in particular as a tragedian “remarkably succinct, delicate, and exquisite in his style; in whom there is not a spare word or anything one could subtract or alter without doing him great violence; who, moreover, is so fond of, and clever at, handling rhetorical themes that he seems to be forever making declamatory speeches.”50 Recognizing the paucity of antique tragedies ­available in print, even at the outset of “this most fortunate present age” [hoc quidem felicissimo seculo], Erasmus saw his endeavor as doubly important.51 First he aimed to provide a faithful translation of Euripides, a crucial task given the “poor texts, shortage of manuscripts, and a lack of commentators [interpretes] to whom we may have recourse.”52 In this sense, his translations were an essential addition to bonae literae, literary achievements which were met with approval by Warham, Manuzio, those uncontroversial authorities (Donatus, Servius, etc.) listed before Erasmus and Melanchthon. Not only had their polemical and devotional writing come under fire, so had their substantial contributions to bonae literae and the literae humaniores; Tedeschi [1991], 340. Tedeschi adds, significantly, that “Within the volume itself both their names and the texts of their commentaries were left intact,” suggesting that censorship measures may have been fairly superficial, that censors might be misled or even appeased by changes to a title page. 50  Erasmus [1975], 108; [1969], 217. Melanchthon makes the same point in the preface to his Latin translation of Euripides’ Phoenissae. See Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 395. 51  While he recognizes that many have attempted Latin translations of Homer, when it comes to tragedy Erasmus names only one predecessor, the Italian Francesco Filelfo; Filelfo translated the opening speech of the Hecuba, delivered by the ghost of Polydorus—a remarkably Senecan moment in the play. Erasmus [1975], 108–9; [1969], 205. 52  Erasmus [1975], 108; [1969], 217. Erasmus also defends this endeavor in his 1516 response to Guillaume Budé. See Erasmus [1976], 307.



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Thomas Linacre, William Latimer, and Cuthbert Tunstall, among others—the chief humanist intellectuals of the age. But Erasmus was also eager to communicate that, insofar as “the very task of turning good Greek into good Latin is one that demands exceptional skill,” his translations of Euripides tested whether he was up to the task of translating the Gospels—that is, “to see whether a favouring breeze might perchance blow from Heaven to forward so bold an endeavor.”53 The tragedies afforded him the opportunity to try his skill at “various and unfamiliar” meters, to recognize and render rhetorical figures across languages, and to develop an ample vocabulary of ancient Greek—all in the service of theology, “in order to restore and support” the word of God against those who would “shamefully disfigure the immortal God by means of sophistical trifling.”54 Erasmus attends to meter and style across his Euripides translations, developing a critical language to adjudicate among tragedies and to differentiate between ­tragedy and other forms of poetry and speech. In this vein Erasmus is all too keen to distinguish Euripides’ Greek, together with his own Latin translations, from the kind of tragedy that among his contemporaries passed for best: if my critics fail to find in my work the elevated language of Latin tragedy [grandiloquentiam], the bombast and words of giant size that Horace speaks of [ampullas et sesquipedalia (vt Flaccus ait) verba], they should not reckon it a fault in me that, as a translator, I have chosen to reproduce the concise clarity and neatness [sanitatem elegantiamque] of my original rather than a pomposity [tumorem] that does not belong to it and in which I take little pleasure in any case.55

Here, as in Horace’s description of tragedy in the Ars Poetica, Euripides eschews bombast and big words in order to “touch the spectator’s heart” [cor spectantis tetigisse].56 But Erasmus suggests that this is not the case with regard to Latin ­tragedy at the end of the fifteenth century; in other words, he draws a subtle distinction between his own Latin Euripides and the tragedies that were staged or circulated in manuscript—fustian works like Marcellino Verardi’s Fernandus Servatus (1493), Leonardo Dati’s Hiempsal (1441/2), or Seneca’s Phaedra performed in the Palazzo Riario, the Castel Sant’Angelo, and the Forum in Rome in 1486.57 This is not an unqualified indictment of Seneca or his imitators. In fact, Erasmus censures the Greek tragedians as well for their tragic choruses. Because of their “excessive striving for novelty of utterance [affectat noue loqui], they destroyed clarity of expression [eloquentiam], and in the hunt for marvelous verbal effects [verborum miracula] their sense of reality suffered [rerum iudicio cessauit]”; Seneca, he claims, actually improves on this aspect of Greek tragedy, eschewing the “great confusion or freedom (whichever it is)” of the Greek choruses.58 But Erasmus is most interested in Euripides’ unmatched technical prowess, the “density of his 53  Erasmus [1975], 108; [1969], 216. 54 “Deum immortalem quam indigne sophisticis nugis deprauatam.” Erasmus [1975], 108, 107; [1969], 217 [I alter the translation here]. Erasmus also cites the adage In dolio figularem artem discere [I.vi.15] in the preface. 55  Erasmus [1975], 110; [1969], 218. 56  Horace [1926], 458–9 [ll.97–8]. For similar approaches, see Herrick [1946]. 57  Grund [2011], xxx–xxxvi. 58  Erasmus [1975], 135, 136; [1969], 272.

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arguments and the rhetorical ability, as it were, of persuading and dissuading,” which enable him to overlook Euripides’ occasional lack of clarity [candor] as well as the fact that his poetry does not exactly flow easily.59 Erasmus believes that Euripides provided an anatomy of human language—crucial, in turn, to understanding Scripture. As the first printed translations of Greek tragedy, Erasmus’ Euripides set a bold pedagogical agenda, expanding the late medieval archive of antique tragedy readily available in Latin.60 These influential Latin translations, based on the editio princeps of Euripides’ tragedies in Greek (Marcus Musurus’ 1503 Aldine text), were primarily intended for student use—that is, to increase students’ familiarity with an otherwise obscure archive of tragic writing, to help them draw precisely the kind of stylistic and structural connections between tragedy and theology that Erasmus advanced across his own work.61 There were 17 editions of Erasmus’ Latin Euripides prior to its inclusion in the 1540 Basel Opera omnia; Melanchthon used Erasmus’ translations in his Wittenberg courses on Euripides, even organizing a student performance of Hecuba, before producing his own translations (more on that anon).62 The Louvain humanist Adriaan Cornelissen van Baerland also held Erasmus’ Euripides in high regard, celebrating their “great elegance” and even supervising a staging, “acted and produced in public . . . by several young men of good family.”63 Thus Erasmus’ translations were crucial to readers long before the initial Latin edition of the complete Euripides in 1541, translated by Rudolf Collinus, and long before Melanchthon’s own translations, in turn, were ­incorporated into a revised Basel edition of the entire corpus in 1558, “stitched together, edited, and supplemented” by Guilielmus Xylander.64 It is no exaggeration to say that Erasmus made Euripides available to new audiences, and played a major role in his canonization. Before Erasmus, readers were more likely to read Euripides in pieces, excerpted by Greek Fathers like Clement of Alexandria, than they were to read an entire tragedy. By 1516 even the Utopians possessed copies of Euripides’ works, “together with Sophocles in the small Aldine type.”65 Erasmus’ turn to tragedy was thus crucial. Indeed, drama and dramatic structure occupy a conspicuous place in the Erasmian program in bonae literae and the literae humaniores. Irreducible to grammar, rhetoric, or dialectic, dramatic works—and tragedies in particular—offered unique insight into Scripture and the divine mind, to say nothing of human speech in human history.66 Like virtually all of his contemporaries, Erasmus initially approaches tragic structure by way of comedy. This may seem counter-intuitive to modern readers, accustomed to a strict division between tragedy and comedy. Nevertheless, Erasmus and his contemporaries often 59  Erasmus [1975], 133; [1969], 271–2: “at rursus argumentorum densitate quasique declamatoria quadam suadendi ac dissuadendi facultate parentem Euripidem magis refert.” 60  Crane [1944], 223–4. 61  Erasmus [1969], 195. On the Aldine editio princeps of Euripides see Garland [2004], 107–9. 62  Erasmus [1969], 212, 207. Erasmus outlines his successive revisions to his Euripides translation in a 1523 letter to Johann von Botzheim. See Erasmus [1989], “To Johann von Botzheim [30 January 1523],” 298. 63  van Baerland [1977], 134. 64  Mastronarde [2010], 9–10. 65  More [1965], 182–3. 66  Cummings [2013].



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pointed to the shared histories and characteristics that united comedy and tragedy. Circa 1500, moreover, among even the most educated readers, most of what was known about genre and dramatic structure applied first to comedy and only by extension and abstraction to tragedy. This stands in stark contrast to our own accounts of antique drama. We assume to know less about antique comedy than we do about antique tragedy because Aristotle does not address comedy in the surviving Poetics. Consider, for instance, the myriad attempts, historical and ­imaginative, to reconstitute Aristotle’s lost treatise on comedy—scholarship on the Tractatus Coislinianus, for instance, or Richard Janko’s reconstruction of the second book of the Poetics, or Walter Watson’s more recent treatments of Aristotelian laughter and the laughable (to say nothing of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose).67 At the outset of the twenty-first century, scholars often lament the scarcity of resources related to antique comedy, assuming that we can speak about tragedy with greater authority and certainty. This was not the case for Erasmus and his contemporaries. Early-sixteenth-century readers had more concrete ideas about comic plots and comic affects, whereas tragedy presented formal and historical challenges. There were of course tragedies and ideas about tragedy before Sophocles’ and Euripides’ works were readily available in print, and diverse medieval readers developed compelling theses on tragedy in the absence of the Poetics. In the vast majority of these cases, tragedy is essentially defined as a type of poetry depicting matters of state, thus involving high characters, and ultimately ending in sorrow, mourning, or disaster. After Lovato dei Lovati’s discovery of Seneca’s tragedies at Pompossa, moreover, his protégé Albertino Mussato wrote the first Senecan tragedy in the Renaissance (the Ecerinis, in 1314–15) as well as the Evidentia Tragediarum Senece (1315–16).68 In his own exhaustive commentary on Seneca’s tragedies, Nicholas Trevet identified tragedy as a species of theologia poetica that is “used by poets and is accommodated to, and exercised in, the theater.”69 Additionally, both Geoffrey Chaucer, in Troilus and Criseyde, and John Lydgate, in the Fall of Princes and the Troy Book, advanced exploratory interpretations of tragedy based on the latest humanist scholarship.70 These, like most medieval treatments of tragedy, eschew the Aristotelian approach pioneered by Averroës and Hermannus (to which I turn momentarily).71 When tragic structure is brought into focus, it is generally done with explicit reference to comedy. For Erasmus, as for his medieval predecessors and his contemporaries alike, the chief authority on dramatic structure was the fourth-century grammarian Aelius Donatus, specifically his exhaustive commentaries on Terence. Some of the earliest treatments of tragic plot or structure take shape apropos of Donatus’ comments on comedy. 67  Watson [2012], 1–9, 179–252. 68  Witt [2003], 112–73; Grund [2011], xiv–xxiv; Kelly [1993], 134–43. See also Braden [1985]. 69  Kelly [1993], 130. See also Bodleian Library MS Bodley 292 [Explicit Exposicio fratris Nicholai Treuich ordinis fratrum Minorum videlicet Tragediarum Senece]; and Minnis and Scott [1988], 324–8, 340–60. 70  Kelly [1997], 92–215. 71  Although Mussato is probably “the only known user of Moerbeke’s translation [of the Poetics] in the Middle Ages,” Kelly notes that “Aristotle’s work had no effect whatsoever upon Mussato’s ideas of tragedy.” See Kelly [1993], 117.

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In the Excerpta de Comoedia, often appended to his late antique commentaries on Terence and frequently reprinted in early modernity, Donatus claims that comic plots are divided into three parts: protasis [πρότασις], epitasis [ἐπίτασις], and catastrophe [καταστροφή].72 These terms (which often appear in Greek in early modern editions) do not correspond to the structure of acts but rather describe the arc of the story or the composition of the plot at a slightly more abstract level.73 For Donatus, the protasis names the “first action of the plot, where part of the argument is explicated, while part of the argument is withheld, to hold the people in suspense”; the epitasis, moreover, is the “complication [inuolutio] of the argument, which is developed with due propriety.”74 In his own brief structural treatment of plot [fabula], in Adage I.ii.36 (“Catastrophe fabulae”), Erasmus follows Donatus closely— perhaps unsurprising, given Erasmus’ storied fidelity to Donatus’ most famous student, St. Jerome. Extending Donatus’ division of comedy to all forms of drama, Erasmus defines the protasis as “the first excitement, swelling as it goes on” [primus ille tumultus iam quasi gliscens] while the epitasis names the ensuing “flurry of complications” [turba feruidissima].75 The catastrophe, at last, is “the unfolding [explicatio] of the plot, where that which came to pass is established”; Erasmus reads this broadly, in his Adagia, where “We call the outcome of anything, in proverbial language, the catastrophe,” where the catastrophe is “a sudden transformation of things” [subita rerum commutatio].76 This formal approach persists into the seventeenth century. Even Daniel Heinsius, who would later play a key role in the adoption of Aristotelian theses on tragedy, referred to protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe in his early oration “De utilitate quae e lectione tragoediarum percipitur”—that is, his lecture “Concerning the usefulness which is perceived from reading tragedies.”77 Erasmus does not refer directly to Aristotle’s Poetics in his treatments of tragedy. If he did in fact know the Poetics, he was most likely to follow Angelo Poliziano in his attempt to harmonize Donatus and Aristotle. Poliziano was among the first humanists to import Aristotelian terms to the study of poetry—in his 1489 lectures on Homer’s Odyssey (printed in 1528) and, via Donatus, in his 1484–5 commentary on Terence’s Andria.78 Poliziano collates Aristotle’s account of the birth of tragedy with Donatus and Horace in his Andria commentary. There are ­nevertheless aspects of the Poetics which seem to confuse him. For instance, where Aristotle notes that Aeschylus “made speech play the leading role” in tragedy, Poliziano is reluctant to explain this, and leaves it in Greek: Aeschylus “instituitque eam partem 72  Baldwin [1947], 32–4. Donatus also points to the prologus, the speech that precedes the actual plot [antecedens ueram fabulae compositionem elocutio] but which is nevertheless not exactly part of the plot itself. AD, I.27–8; and Evanthius [1962]. 73  Erasmus follows this, in a key adage—Supremum fabulae actum addere; here catastrophe seems to be a description proper to action and plot, whereas the act structure serves a different purpose, however opaque: “to add a last act to the play [Supremum fabulae actum addere] means to bring to a termination, arising from the poets who write comedies and tragedies and cut up their plays into acts” [Supremum fabulae actum addere pro eo, quod est: extremum finem imponere, a poetis comoediarum aut tragoediarum scriptoribus ascitum, qui fabulas suas in actus quosdam distribuunt]. Erasmus [1982], 177; [1993], 249. 74  AD, I.27–8. 75  Erasmus [1982], 178; [1993], 250. 76  AD, I.28; Erasmus [1982], 177–8 [I alter the translation here]; [1993], 250. 77  See Chapter 4, p. 172. 78  Schrier [1998], 19.



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quae vocatur λόγοϛ πρωταγωνιστήϛ”—that is, Aeschylus “instituted that part of tragedy which is called ‘Speech, the Leading Actor.’ ”79 Poliziano does not conflate this with Horace’s seemingly similar claim in the Ars Poetica, that Aeschylus “taught a lofty speech.”80 And he generally avoids Aristotle’s foreign technical terms ­altogether; there is no treatment, in the Andria commentary, of any aspects of the Poetics after 1449b—no katharsis, no peripeteia, nothing on plot. Poliziano follows Donatus, rather, and affirms tragedy’s deep antiquity, older than comedy, before moving to a much more specific and elaborate treatment of the origins of comedy and comic structure.81 Like Poliziano, Erasmus comes to tragedy by way of comedy, with an eye to theology. Rhetorical, theological, and dramatic forms converge, for instance, in his Explanatio Symboli Apostolorum siue Catechismus (1533), as Erasmus’ wise Catechist presents the Apostle’s Creed as a “salvific plot” [salutiferae fabulae] complete with protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe—with “all the acts and celestial scenes of this choragus set forth in an arrangement beyond powers of description” [actus omnes ac scenas coelestis illius Choragi ineffabili dispensatione digestas].82 Erasmus discovers a tragic structure in the Apostles’ Creed at large, identifying God as the choragus [χορηγόϛ]: not only is God the leader of the tragic chorus here, but the one who defrays the cost and provides the materia as well. Erasmus suggests that the Creed is a choral form, its recitation appropriate to the common people who bear witness to the triumphs and calamities of their superiors. Like Erasmus, the Paris printer Bade also explores the structure and the divine province of tragedy in his 1502 Preface to Terence before testing the relevance of the Poetics directly in his 1512 Preface to Erasmus’ edition of Seneca (which Bade also printed).83 With reference to the Creed, then, Erasmus translates the tripartite structure (protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe) from drama to rhetoric in general, a grand attempt to understand dynamic speech, gesture, and presentation in theatrical terms. He subtly argues the extended relevance of drama across those arts and sciences which take shape in language. The tripartite division of drama, as well as the style and office appropriate to a tragic chorus, serve as important rhetorical devices; a clear understanding of dramatic structure renders language, and language in history, intelligible.84 Due attention to drama yields eloquent students. But Erasmus also demonstrates the relevance of drama—and tragedy in particular—to theology, where God proceeds as a choragus, where Scripture and the fundamental documents of the Church (here, nothing less than the Apostles’ Creed) take shape in dramatic terms. Erasmus’ use of Donatus was as controversial as it was innovative. The Paris theologian Noël Béda, in an elaborate 1526 excoriation of both Erasmus and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, reminded his opponents that “the Bible was not subject to the rules of the grammarian Donatus.”85 Erasmus emphasized style and invention; Béda responded with disdain, censuring Erasmus’ license and his inattention to ­theology, placing undue 79  Poliziano [1973], 14. 80  Horace [1926], 472–3 [l.280]. 81  Poliziano [1973], 13. 82  Erasmus [1998], 251 [I alter the translation slightly]; [1534], 15r. 83  Bade [1988], 51–69, 146–7. 84  Hoffman [1994], 145. 85  Béda is referring to the Paraphrases in particular, and to Erasmus’ censure of “Paul’s idiomatic lapses and solecisms.” Rummel [2002], 270, 269.

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“confidence in his knowledge of the humanities and his language skills.”86 Among other things, Béda censured Erasmus for his misplaced attention to tragedy. Nevertheless, Erasmus’ early engagements with Euripides gave shape to many of his most enduring works—to the Adagiorum chiliades, or Adages, for instance, which ostensibly begins with a Pythagorean axiom that Erasmus collates with a line from Euripides’ own Orestes: “Κοινὰ γὰρ τὰ τῶν φίλων, that is, Between friends all is common.”87 Like the Greek Patristics Origen and Clement of Alexandria, Erasmus is drawn to the sententious moments in Euripides—for instance, the final words in Hecuba: “Nam sic vrget nescia flecti et/ Cogit dira necessitas” [Necessity is harsh. Fate has no reprieve].88 Across the Adages, which Erasmus printed in various iterations from 1500 until his death in 1536, so many of the entries “come from the stage, that is, from tragedies and comedies.”89 The work is replete with theatrical references gathered to enhance the reader’s “power of persuasion” and, following Aristotle, to provide “evidence” [testimonia] in rhetorical demonstrations.90 Tragice loqui [II.v.39], Tragicum tueri [II.v.40], Tragicus rex [II.v.79], Tragica simia [II.viii.210], Erinnys ex tragoedia [IV.ii.95], Tragicus Theocrines [IV.iii.39], and the like define tragedy in broad terms. Nevertheless, there are moments, as in Tragicum malum [IV.iii.40], where Erasmus renders the distinctions between comedy and tragedy in more detail; here Erasmus cites Quintilian to affirm that the “fierce” tragic affects are called “passions” [πάθη], while the more “mild” affects in comedy are called “dispositions” [ἤθη], an insight that adds precision to commonplaces on the ends of tragedy.91 The earliest editions of the Adagia featured quotations from unnamed tragedies—Simplex veritatis fabula, for instance, which Erasmus (after Poliziano) claims only “to be from a certain tragedy” [Tragici cuiusdam esse].92 In the 1515 and 1518 editions, however, Erasmus expanded this very treatment significantly, citing Euripides and Seneca, giving further shape to an adage that increasingly served as a tragic archive.93 The same is true of Actum est [I.iii.39], where Erasmus draws Euripides, Terence, Plautus, and Donatus together to illustrate how “We use these words [Actum est: All is over] proverbially even today to signify despair.”94 In addition to structure, Erasmus thus mines antique tragedy for adages—a practice that influenced subsequent editions of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca. Erasmus is preoccupied with sententiae, commonplaces, zeugmata, exemplary ­rhetorical figures, and nuggets of wisdom cast throughout a work. In this sense, his reading practice is consonant with printing practices, with the way that printed tragedies actually looked on the page across the sixteenth century. Adages and commonplaces were marked with commas or inverted commas in the margins, or changes in typeface, guiding readers to the movable, abstractable, quotable sections. According to Ann Moss, this practice ostensibly originated in early modern editions 86  Rummel [2002], 270. 87  Erasmus [1982], 29–30; [1993], 250. 88  Erasmus [1969], 268; Euripides [1947], 68. 89  “Vel e scena, hoc est tragicorum et comicorum actis fabulis.” Erasmus [1982], 5; [1993], 48. 90  Erasmus [1982], 16; [1993], 62. 91  Erasmus [2006], 27; [1999], 158. 92  That is, in the 1506 Collectanea [Simplex veritatis oratio]. Erasmus [1999], 145. 93  Erasmus [1982], 308; [1993], 394–5. 94  Erasmus [1982], 268; [1993], 353.



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of antique tragedy, as “The first book printed with marginal indicators of sententiae is said to be a Latin edition of Seneca’s tragedies published by [Philippo] de Giunta at Florence in 1506”; moreover, as Zachary Lesser and Peter Stallybrass demonstrate, “In England, a Greek edition of Euripides’ Trojan Women printed by John Day in 1575 contains numerous lines marked with commas, as does Thomas Watson’s 1581 Latin edition of Sophocles’ Antigone, printed by John Wolfe.”95 Lesser and Stallybrass point to the importance, following András Kiséry, of the “inverted commas [that] appear beside both the Greek text and the Latin translation of two Euripidean tragedies printed at Basel”—that is, to Erasmus’ own Euripides translations, reprinted, together with the Greek text, by Johann Froben at Basel in 1524!96 In addition to making tragedies more available to Latin audiences, Erasmus also shaped reading and printing practices themselves, teaching generations of readers how to understand and use tragedy. Q U I D H AC I M AG I N E LU G U B R I U S C O G I TA R I P OT E S T ? : MELANCHTHON ON TRAGEDY Melanchthon expanded the tragic canon and demonstrated its relevance to t­ heology and philosophy, connecting Erasmus’ philological investigations of t­ragedy to Bucer’s Reformed program of ludic edification. Indeed, despite their theological differences, Melanchthon is the most Erasmian of the early Reformers.97 His earliest publications, inspired directly by Erasmus and his humanist contemporaries, betray investments in rhetoric, dialectic, grammar, and translation without any explicit theological bent—for instance, his edition of Terence (printed in 1516, which Erasmus praised in his own 1516 Annotationes, in a passage that was omitted in later editions), a Grammatica Graeca (1518), and his De Rhetorica Libri Tres (1519).98 A Hellenist and a humanist first, Melanchthon was named Professor of Greek at Wittenberg University in 1518. It was only in 1526 that Melanchthon was appointed to a second position as Professor of Theology, after years of ­additional study and work alongside his Wittenberg colleague and teacher Martin Luther.99 Melanchthon shared Luther’s predilection for Roman comedy and, increasingly, adopted devotional habits and theological commitments that were consonant with Luther’s own.100 Luther, in turn, admired his younger colleague’s expertise and affirmed his propaedeutic mandate, that “a sense of appropriate language contributes to understanding the mysteries of sacred things,” that grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, together with Greek history and poetry, stood to improve one’s understanding

95  Moss [1996], 211; Lesser and Stallybrass [2008], 376. 96  Lesser and Stallybrass [2008], 376; Erasmus [1993], 214. 97  Among the many works that explore Melanchthon’s relationship to Erasmus, see Mansfield [1979], 86–93; Wengert [1998]; and Rummel [2000], 75–101. 98  Scheible [1986], 426. 99  Ben-Tov [2005], 135–6; and Rhein [1997], 150–2. 100  Luther himself compared his daily life to situations in Terence, and praised the moral pedagogy of the Roman comedians. Luther [1967], 390, 289.

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of Scripture and providence.101 From 1516 on, drama was always integral to Melanchthon’s pedagogical and theological programs. But Melanchthon began his career with relatively little interest in tragedy. Like Luther, Melanchthon recognized the importance of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics, but he seldom mentioned tragedies themselves in his earliest works, and virtually never with reference to Aristotle.102 Moreover, like Erasmus and most of his other contemporaries, Melanchthon initially understood tragedy by way of comedy. He cites the Poetics in his celebrated edition of Terence—evidence that he had read the Poetics as early as 1516—but only with reference to meter; beyond this Melanchthon prefers more traditional approaches that privilege comedy and its historical vicissitudes.103 In his earliest account of the origins of comedies, satyr-plays, and ­tragedies, for instance, he claims that all three forms stem from the same series of events in Athens, where critics aired their grievances in the public theater under cover of night. Seeing this as “a useful protection against injuries or corruption” [utile civitati iniuriae amuletum], the people of Athens “ordained [sancivit] that the most ingenious poets might thereafter speak freely and with impunity against all types of men”—the genesis of Old Comedy.104 All early theater, in the broadest sense, is aligned with rhetoric and politics, “a kind of playing that pleases, but not without gravity and consequence” [talis lusus non sine gravitate placuit].105 While one might easily extrapolate the birth of tragedy from this general account, Melanchthon says next to nothing about tragedy, moving quickly to Susarion and the political pedigree of the Athenian Old Comedy. This is not inappropriate in a preface to Terence, where comedy and its origins are obviously relevant, but it is nevertheless telling: in 1516, Melanchthon finds tragedy either too difficult to identify or else irrelevant to his brief formal history. This stands in marked contrast to Melanchthon’s more robust treatment of comedy in 1516. Comedy, in its wide variety, recounts the “lives of ordinary people and the fortunes of citizens”; comedies are “mirrors of experience, imitations of life, images of truth.”106 In 1516 Melanchthon defines tragedy only in vague comparative terms. The “affairs of princes and noblemen are depicted” in tragedy, while in comedy we are privy to things proper to particular citizens or discrete households; tragedy begins happily and ends in sadness while comedy proceeds in the opposite direction; the story depicted in every comedy is fictive—in other words, “omnis comoedia de fictis est argumentis”—while tragedy usually takes recourse to “historical faith” [tragoedia saepe ab historica fide petitur].107 Melanchthon uses these relatively imprecise determinations of tragedy to distinguish it from the comedies with which he is much more familiar and interested. Some thirty years later things were very different. Melanchthon’s treatment of tragedy became progressively more sophisticated across his career, a change evident in his Cohortatio ad Legendas Tragoedias et Comoedias, his preface to a 1545 edition 101  From Melanchthon’s inaugural address at Wittenberg in 1518, De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis, quoted in Kusukawa [1995], 38. 102  Kusukawa [1995], 42–3; and Schmitt [1983], 10–33, esp. 26. 103  MEnn, 688. 104  MEnn, 681–2. 105  MEnn, 681–2. 106  MEnn, 681–2. 107  MEnn, 693.



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of Terence edited by his colleague Joachim Camerarius.108 Not only did tragedy occupy a more prominent place in his pedagogical program, he also affirms its theological and ethical eminence, claiming that the purview of every tragedy is nothing less than faith and justice: “Discite Iustitiam moniti et non spernere divos”— that is, “Be warned: learn to know Justice, and not to scorn the gods.”109 This maxim, Melanchthon claims, is “the principal argument of every tragedy.” Just as tragedians “aim to fix this bit of wisdom in every mind, to be, in a sense, an unchanging rule” [aliquam mentem aeternam], so too does Melanchthon affirm tragedy’s theological purview; tragedy “turns many to moderation, and certainly strives to move us more, who know it and are often led to the Holy Church by the clear voice of God.”110 He frequently cites the antique tragedians in his work, directly or by way of Patristic intermediaries.111 Moreover, in his 1545 Preface to Terence, Melanchthon reverses the order and emphasis of his 1516 Preface. While he previously approached tragedy only by way of comedy, in his Cohortatio ad Legendas Tragoedias et Comoedias he foregrounds tragedy, celebrating its reputation in order to frame his defense of comedy! Here tragedy grants comedy its relative nobility. For Melanchthon, tragedies are: useful in shaping habits [mores regendos] and in cultivating eloquence, as examples of both habits and eloquence are more noble [illustriora] in tragedies than in comedies. Yet, although comedies were devised more as an occasion for joking and revelry, the purpose [consilium] is almost the same—indeed, the Old Comedy is closer to Tragedy.112

Melanchthon’s claim is novel, sharpening the history of dramatic form he sketched only broadly in 1516. Here the Old Comedy—and, in particular, the work of Aristophanes—is related to tragedy, as the ends and designs of tragedy and the Old Comedy are “almost the same” [pene . . . simile]. Melanchthon even suggests that the Old Comedy is “propior”—that is, “closer” to or “more closely resembling”— tragedy. Tragedy takes new precedence in this evolutionary account of poetry and form. Whereas Melanchthon largely eschewed the origins or varieties of tragedy in his 1516 edition of Terence, by 1545 Plautus and Terence alike are made palatable and appropriate to student life only in their genetic proximity to tragedy. The Cohortatio ad Legendas Tragoedias et Comoedias bears the traces of Melanchthon’s long academic preoccupation with tragedy. At Wittenberg, as part of the Greek curriculum, Melanchthon lectured extensively on tragedy, with courses on Sophocles’ Antigone (1534–5), as well as the larger corpus (Ajax, Electra, 108  See also Parente [1987], 20–6. 109  Melanchthon’s is a reference here to Pindar’s Second Pythian Ode as well as to Book VI of Vergil’s Aeneid (where “temnere” generally stands in place of Melanchthon’s “spernere”). MCoh, 568. 110  MCoh, 568: “Ita Tragoediarum omnium hoc praecipuum est argumentum. Hanc sententiam volunt omnium animis infigere, esse aliquam mentem aeternam . . . . Haec sententia multos ad moderationem flectebat, que nos quidem magis movere debet, qui scimus eam et Ecclesiae clara Dei voce saepe traditam esse.” 111  Meijering [1983], 50, 60. 112  MCoh, 569: “sint utiles ad mores regendos et ad eloquentiam, quia et morum et eloquentiae exempla sunt illustriora in Tragoediis, quam in Comoediis. Etsi autem Comoediae ioci et oblectationis causa magis fictae sunt, tamen consilium pene est simile. Equidem vetus Comoedia propior est Tragoediae.”

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Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus in 1545) and Euripides’ Phoenissae (1537), Iphigenia in Aulis (1540), and Medea (1540). Melanchthon’s lectures on Sophocles appeared in print in 1546, integrated into his student Vitus Winshemius’ critical translation of all seven tragedies.113 Melanchthon’s final lectures, moreover, dealt with Euripides, probably drawing from his (and his students’) expansive translations of the complete tragedies (which saw print in 1558 and, posthumously, in a more comprehensive 1562 edition).114 Like virtually all of his contemporaries, Melanchthon ignores Aeschylus and looks carefully at the remaining two Greek tragedians, upon whom Aristophanes himself bestowed great praise: Sophocles and Euripides. These two tragedians provide him with a basis for comparison—for instance, “while Sophocles is generally held in greater esteem by the masses,” he claimed, “Euripides is nevertheless more rhetorical, and has more ornamentation.”115 Following Erasmus, Melanchthon exploits Euripides’ ­rhetorical prowess, emphasizing his eloquence and attention to decorum across his lectures. The Phoenissae in particular was replete with “exceptional orations with which it admonishes modesty and teaches that together we ought to concern ourselves for the commonweal and not plunge the state into crisis, motivated by greed, pride or other private impulses.”116 Euripides grants students insight into language, offering exemplary grammatical forms and rhetorical figures in a historical language not unrelated to Scripture or other volumes of antique wisdom. Melanchthon endorses Cicero’s claim, confirming that he too “certainly considers Euripides’ verses to be remarkable testimonies” [certe singulos eius versus singula testimonia puto].117 Quotations, discrete sections, and fragments might serve as sententiae or commonplaces, to lend credence and authority to speeches and other oratorical ­ performances. Euripides’ plays were repositories of wisdom, yielding nuggets of truth that appealed to readers and shaped interpretations. Melanchthon mined the t­ ragedies for sententiae and, like Erasmus and a host of early modern printers, shaped how tragedy appeared in print. Sententious passages are distinguished by quotation marks and marginal notes, guiding readers’ eyes to particularly wise or important (read: quotable) verses. Melanchthon translated Sophocles and Euripides into Latin for student ­performance as well as for the ease of curious readers without fluency in Greek. He testifies, “I myself often shudder in my entire body while merely reading them, before having seen them in the theater where the tragedies of Sophocles or Euripides are acted. Neither is anyone truly so unfeeling, who might read of the rivalry between the Theban brothers, or the end of their mother Iocasta, without great 113  Sophocles [1546]; Lurie [2012], 441–4. 114  Rhein [1997], 164–70. 115  See Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 395: “Sed vulgo Sophocles iudicatur grandior; aliquanto magis rhetoricus est Euripides, et plus habet ornamentorum.” 116  Quoted and translated in Rhein [1997], 160. 117  Cicero’s testimony lent authority to early printed editions of Euripides—for instance, the 1550 translation completed by the Reformer Rudolf Collin (under the pseudonym Dorotheus Camillus), printed by Oporinus in Basel: Euripidis tragicorum omnium principis, cuiusque singulos versus singula se testimonia M. Cicero putare ait, tragoediae XVIII. Cicero [2001], 86–9 [my translation]. This is quoted in the 1538 “Praefatio in Homerum Viti Winshemii.” See Winshemius [1843], 403.



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dismay.”118 Contrary to some later anti-theatrical writers in Protestant traditions, Melanchthon believed that tragedies were valuable in performance and print, and might be acted to great effect for popular and academic audiences alike, “acted, viewed, read, and heard by the learned and the public, not as titillating stories, but as instructions for the government of life.”119 His tone is confident, affirming that “there is no doubt that reading tragedies is extremely useful to students, calling to mind a life with many duties and of restraining immoderate passions, and certainly to eloquence.”120 Moreover, tragedies exercise a great hold on spectators. Because tragedians tarry with human miseries and their remedies, tragedies “are the more avidly desired—and, in turn, are more attentively examined” [Appetuntur ergo avidius, quo magis introspectae sunt], in print and performance.121 But perhaps the greatest praise Melanchthon lavishes on tragedy lies in his peculiar rhetorical question, “Quid hac imagine lugubrius cogitari potest?”—that is, “What might one think upon that is more doleful than this representation?”— “this representation” being the conclusion of the Phoenissae, the point at which the humiliated Oedipus departs Thebes, ready to “bear the necessities sent by the gods.”122 Melanchthon’s Theban saga is decidedly Euripidean, and he refers here to Iocasta’s demise by her own hand in the Phoenissae (not in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex), between her sons’ bodies, arms splayed out, as if ready to embrace death. His ­rhetorical question testifies to the tragedy’s gravity and probes its capacities to represent as well as to exceed representation. The comparative “lugubrius” tests the tragedy’s limits: what can be more doleful, more plaintive, more pathetic than this imitation? Euripides’ Phoenissae moves readers, auditors, and spectators in profound ways, so much so that Melanchthon compares such tragic scenes and sententiae directly to the voice of God that delivers men to salvation. In its profundity, tragedy confounds the senses and cultivates care and attention. Melanchthon describes this in aesthetic terms, where “just as in a superior painting the skill cannot be discerned when seen at a glance, so in these most wisely written works every aspect cannot be observed at once”—precisely the reason why “it is often the custom in theaters to represent the same plots [fabulas],” to afford audiences multiple opportunities to consider tragic events from different perspectives.123 But spectators are nonetheless moved, even if they don’t completely or astutely understand what they have seen. 118  MCoh, 567–8: “Ego ipse saepe tot corpore cohorresco legens tantum, non etiam intuens ut in theatro agentes Sophoclis aut Euripidis Tragoedias. Nec vero quisquam tam ferreus est, qui sine animi consternatione legat fratrum Thebanorum certamen, et matris Iocastae exitum.” 119  MCoh, 568: “Haec igitur agebantur, spectabantur, legebantur, audiebantur et a sapientibus et a populo, non ut erotica, sed ut doctrina de gubernatione vitae.” 120  MCoh, 568: “Quare Tragoediarum lectionem valde utilem adolescentibus esse non dubium est, cum ad commonefaciendos animos de multis vitae officiis et de frenandis immoderatis cupiditatibus, tum vero etiam ad eloquentiam.” 121  MCoh, 568. 122 MCoh, 568; and Euripides [2002], 394–5. See also Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 395–6. Melanchthon’s judgment looks forward to Tanya Pollard’s account of the sixteenth-century reception of women in Greek tragedy. See Pollard [2017]. 123  MCoh, 568–9: “Ac ut in excellenti pictura non potest ars subito contuitu iudicari, ita in his operibus sapientissime scriptis non statim perspici omnia membra possunt. Quare usitatum fuit saepe in theatra easdem fabulas referre.”

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Thus Melanchthon extols tragedy—related to rhetoric, replete with exemplary speeches, appropriate figures, and applicable commonplaces—for its pedagogical value as well as for its effects, its languages and gestures designed “to stir all of the passions of the soul.”124 This is clear in the Cohortatio ad Legendas Tragoedias et Comoedias as Melanchthon testifies to tragedy’s social and political utility: Having frequently pondered the habits and discipline of men, I greatly admire the counsel of the Greeks, who from the beginning presented tragedies to people—not, as the vulgar reckon, only in order to delight, but much more so that upon consideration of such terrible examples and events, their rude and uncultivated spirits might incline to moderation, furnishing their wild desires [cupiditates] with a bridle, as those disastrous accounts of kings and cities reveal the weakness of human nature, the inconstancy of fortune, the peaceful ends of those who acted justly and the opposite: the most sorrowful punishments of wicked deeds. This was a thing of singular prudence, to choose arguments of terrible and notable events rather than vulgar events, which by remembrance might terrify [cohorrescerent] entire theaters. For people are not moved by considering lighter or more ordinary misfortunes, but by having a terrifying sight cast before their eyes, which might pierce their souls and hold fast all day, to move them by way of compassion [commiseratione], so that they reflect upon the causes of human calamities, and each one might comport [conferant] themselves to these representations. Nor was there little opportunity and art to express in whatever manner the magnitude of such things with grandiloquence in speech and variety in gestures.125

To the letter, Melanchthon celebrates tragedy for its useful capacity to inspire fear (he uses the verb cohorresco) and compassion (literally, commiseratio). Although this is not necessarily a reference to Aristotelian katharsis, Melanchthon tacitly rejects the Erasmian notion that tragedy traffics primarily in awe. He is confident, ­moreover, that careful readers might marshal tragedy to pious ends—thinking, undoubtedly, of the contemporary tragoedia sacra to which Bucer refers (and which I discuss momentarily). As he became more familiar with the corpus of antique tragedy, as well as an emergent archive of sacred tragedy, Melanchthon also studied tragic form with much more specificity. Tragedy remained an “image of courtly or political life, depicting royal characters [personas], princes and tyrants, partly good, partly bad,” but he also studied elements of plot as well as personation—particularly the c­ horus, 124  MCoh, 568: “ad omnes animorum motus ciendos accommodati.” 125  MCoh, 567: Saepe de hominum moribus et de disciplina cogitans, Graecorum consilium valde admiror, qui initio Tragoedias populo proposuerunt, nequaquam ut vulgo existimatur, tantum oblectationis causa, sed multo magis, ut rudes ac feros animos consideratione atrocium exemplorum et casuum flecterent ad moderationem, et frenandas cupiditates, quod in illis Regum et urbium eventibus imbecillitatem naturae hominum, fortunae inconstantiam, et exitus placidos iuste factorum, e contra vero tristissimas scelerum poenas ostendebant. Qua in re et hoc singularis prudentiae fuit, eligere argumenta non vulgarium casuum, sed insignium et atrocium, quorum commemoratione cohorrescerent theatra. Non enim movetur populous levium aut mediocrium miseriarum cogitatione, sed terribilis species obiicienda est oculis, quae penetret in animos et diu haereat, et moveat illa ipsa commiseratione, ut de causis humanarum calamitatum cogitent, et singuli se ad illas imagines conferant. Nec fuit exigua facultas et ars, grandiloquentia sermonis et gestuum varietate magnitudinem rerum utcunque exprimere.



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“which represents the people” [qui populum significant].126 Even if, in tragedy, “nothing really happens [nihil admodum agit] unless it is set in motion by command of princes,” Melanchthon, ever the dialectician, seems interested in the mediations through which the plot unfolds.127 He examines, for instance, the function of the Euripidean chorus, exploring its ability to express the will and mood of a people. While the people of the chorus are inferior to the true noble subjects of tragedy, the choral speeches nevertheless deliver a “complete” or “full” [plena] depiction of the affects, a comprehensive archive of feelings that does not exist elsewhere in tragedy or comedy.128 Across his translations and commentaries on Euripides and Sophocles, moreover, Melanchthon points frequently to tragedy’s implicit holiness, the extent to which even pagan tragedy yields Christian insight. Towards the end of Sophocles’ Ajax, for instance, Menelaus forbids the Greeks from burying Ajax’s body on the grounds that it is the will of the gods: “Know that when a man feels fear and shame, then he is safe! But where he can be insolent and do as he pleases, believe that the city, though at first it has sailed along easily, will in time sink to the bottom!”129 Yet when Melanchthon translated a fragment of Ajax into Latin—included in a letter to Camerarius in 1534, a year when Melanchthon lectured on Sophocles—he added an important and relevant ­theological dimension: Ubi petulanter facere quod libet licet, Legumque vox et ira vindicis Dei Ridentur, ac inane nomen est pudor: Magno ruet ventis secundis impetus, Mox in profundum mersa tota civitas. [Where one is wantonly allowed to do that which is pleasing, the voice of law and the wrath of the vengeful God are mocked, and even “shame” is an empty word: an assault of violent winds will cast it from greatness, the entire city soon immersed in the deep].130

Here Melanchthon faithfully renders the first line from the Greek, but eschews the nautical metaphor, save for the force of the violent winds [ventis secundis impetus] and the loss of the city to the deep [in profundum mersa]. In its place he adds ­theological references that are foreign to the Greek as well as to most modern English translations—namely, the “voice” [vox] of the law as well as “the wrath of the vengeful God” [ira vindicis Dei]. Taken on its own, this fragment says little, but when read in light of Melanchthon’s complete Euripides, it serves as an interpretive maxim, demonstrating how readers might wrest Christian meaning from antique tragedy. Euripides, sententious and eloquent, also becomes reverent, even pious, in Melanchthon’s translations.131 126  Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 395. 127  Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 395. 128 “Plenae sunt affectuum Phoenissae in hac tragoedia”; Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 396. Comedy does present a variety of low characters and their attendant qualities, just as tragedy depicts high characters—but Melanchthon does not seem to extend the rich emotional palette of the tragic chorus to any other kind of speaker. 129  Sophocles [1994], 130–1. 130  Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Duorum Locorum ex Sophoclis Tragoediis” [1852], 277–8. 131 Sections marked as sententiae in his editions evince Melanchthon’s preoccupation with ­tragic necessity, with obvious connections to concurrent theological discussions about justification,

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Melanchthon seems to have amended his translations of Euripides until his death in 1560, influencing a generation of students in the process. His students, in turn, continued his work after his death; Guilelmus Xylander printed a revised edition of Melanchthon’s texts in 1562, the same year that another student of Melanchthon’s, Gasparus Stiblinus, published an even more exhaustive edition of Euripides in Basel.132 Xylander incorporated Melanchthon’s edits as well as his own. Even successive changes to the translation testify to tragedy’s theological utility. In the posthumous 1562 text of Orestes, for instance, Menelaus claims “Omni necessitate serviunt sapientes” [The wise are enslaved by every necessity], emending the earlier 1558 “Omne fatale servum est etiam apud sapientes.”133 The corrected version emphasizes necessity rather than a pagan notion of fate, a change that ­ echoes the marked commonplaces across Melanchthon’s Latin text—for instance, Hecuba’s own “Heu, non est mortalium, qui sit liber” [Alas, he is not mortal, who is free] in Hecuba.134 Tragedy investigates necessity, and demonstrates the degree to which man is not free and the human will, ineffective. And Melanchthon’s Euripides, in turn, reflects on the power of tragedy, to move readers and spectators to pity. In the Andromache, the Chorus models the proper response to tragedy: “Miserta sum audiens; nam calamitates sunt miserabiles/ Omnibus hominibus, etiamsi quis alienus sit” [I was moved to pity hearing this, for calamities are pitiable to all men, even if one is a stranger], another fragment set apart by quotation marks, identified as a commonplace.135 In addition to eloquence and observations on the instability of public life, Melanchthon’s Euripides comports spectators and readers to the exigencies of human being and the will of God. Like Hecuba in the Melanchthonian Troades, we learn that “Necessitas dura est”—that is, “Necessity is unyielding.”136

predestination, and divine omnipotence. In Euripides’ Supplices, for instance, Melanchthon sets the following quote apart as a commonplace, with the marginal notation “Dei auxilium” [God’s Assistance]: “nam virtus nihil prodest/ Hominibus, nisi habeat etiam Deum iuvantem” [For excellence of character is of no use to men, unless he also has God’s help]. See Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 636. On a related note, Melanchthon emends Erasmus’ translation of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulide; in a commonplace set apart by quotation marks, with the marginal annotation “Conditio humana,” the Senex claims “Oportet te gaudere et dolore affici/ Es enim mortalis; et etiamsi tu non voles,/ Tamen divina sic volent” [It is proper that you be moved to rejoice and to suffer for you are mortal, and regardless of what you will not want, it is nevertheless as the divine wills], altering Erasmus’ comparable “Gaudere atque dolore necesse est,/ Mortalis enim es; sin tu nolis,/ Tamen eueniet: sic diis placitum.” Erasmus emphasizes the necessity of suffering while Melanchthon softens this necessity with “Oportet”; suffering and joy alike are “proper” to human life, and reasonable to expect, but not necessary. Lewis and Short make this distinction clear: “oportet denotes the necessity of reason or duty, necesse est that of compulsion”—a key difference when one relates this sententious passage to Reformation disputes over predestination and sin. See Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 659; Erasmus [1969], 275; and Lewis and Short [1879], “ŏportet, ŭit, 2.” 132  Mastronarde [2010], 9–11. 133  Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 354. 134  Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 318. 135  Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 589. 136  Melanchthon, “Interpretatio Latina Duodeviginti Tragoediarum Euripidis” [1852], 821.



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T R AG O E D I A S AC R A Erasmus’ and Melanchthon’s studies of antique tragedy emerged in tandem with a humanist archive of tragoedia sacra. Bucer’s comments on tragedy undoubtedly reflect his familiarity with a considerable archive of dramatic presentations of Scriptural fabulae produced before 1550, ranging from more obscure works like Ioannes Franciscus Quintianus Stoa’s 1508 Theoandrothanatos or Nicolas Barthelemy de Loches’s 1529 Christus Xilonicus to George Buchanan’s familiar tragedies Iephthes sive Votum and Baptistes sive Calumnia, both of which were likely written between 1540 and 1543.137 Many of these dramatists, generally writing in Latin, adapted traditional or medieval works and themes with an eye to humanist pedagogical demands.138 As such, most of the Latin works eschew controversy in the interest of education. In other words, early tragedians were reluctant to articulate deliberately Protestant perspectives on politics or devotion. In the majority of cases, as Gary  R.  Grund insists, “The demands of pedagogy abrogated the polemics of theology.”139 Divisive Reformation tragedies like Thomas Naogeorgus’ Pammachius (1538) were relatively rare; while Naogeorgus and his contemporaries John Foxe, Francesco Negri, and Bernardino Ochino (all of whom I treat in Chapter 1) courted controversy with their blistering attacks on Catholic practices and politics, most tragedians offered less polemical visions of tragoedia sacra. The pedagogue and “Ludimoderator” Sixt Birck, or Xystus Betuleius, for instance, composed the tragedies Zorobabel (1531) and Beel (1539) as well as the tragicomedies Susanna (1532), Judith (1534), and the Sapientia Salomonis (1547) for student production in Basel and (later) Augsburg.140 Birck’s works featured prominently in massive collections of dramata sacra printed in Basel by Nicolaus Brylinger (1541) and Johannes Oporinus (1547), influential anthologies that circulated internationally for diverse audiences.141 Here the Lutheran Birck’s plays appeared alongside those of his Catholic contemporary Hieronymus Ziegler, the author of the tragicomedies Protoplastus (1545) and Nomothesia (1540) as well as the tragedies Samson (1547) and Heli sive Paedonothia (1543). Both Birck and Ziegler wrote for student performance and generally avoided contentious theological or political issues related to Reformation. The same might be said of Jacob Schöpper, the priest and humanist pedagogue in Dortmund who composed the tragedy Ectrachelistes sive Johannes Decollatus (1546) as well as the tragicomedies Voluptatis ac Virtutis Pugna (1546), Monomachia Davidis et Goliae (1550), and Abraham Tentatus

137  Following Erasmus and Melanchthon, Buchanan also translated Euripides’ Medea and Alcestis into Latin. See Leo [2016]; and Buchanan [1983], 2–3. 138  This is true, for instance, of Georgius Macropedius’ Latin comedies as well as John Bale’s dramatic oeuvre in English. See Giebels and Slits [2005]. 139  Grund [2015], 111; Parente [1987], 61–94; and Leo [2015]. 140  Birck wrote in Latin and German. The Latin Beel (1539), for instance, was an expanded version of his earlier German play Ein herliche Tragedi wider die Abgöttery (1535). See Lähnemann [2006], 315–25; Arnold [1941], 253; and Pantaleon [1566], 254. 141  By 1559, however, Birck’s name appeared on the Index: “Xistus Betuleus Augustanus, cum omnibus operibus suis.” See Index Auctorum, et Librorum . . . [1559], Hivv.

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(1551).142 So too were sacred tragedies read—even praised—despite serious ­theological and political rifts between the tragedians and their audiences. Thomas Watson, for instance, composed his tragedy Absalom for performance at St John’s College, Cambridge (probably between 1535 and 1545). As the Catholic Bishop of Lincoln, Watson actually presided over the exhumation and posthumous burning of Bucer’s corpse in 1557, but his own tragedy was nevertheless celebrated by his learned contemporaries Sir John Cheke and Roger Ascham—Ascham, a moderate Protestant; and Cheke, a virulent advocate of Reform who spent most of Mary’s reign in Basel and Strasbourg, as well as a friend to Bucer, Thomas Cranmer, and John a Lasco. Cheke, who served as the first Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge between 1540 and 1551, undoubtedly respected Watson’s attention to tragic form and language. Recalling their conversations many years later, Ascham testifies that he and Cheke praised Absalom for its fidelity to “Aristotles precepts, and Euripides examples.”143 In other words, while early Reformation debates were of course salient to tragoedia sacra in the period, they did not entirely determine readers’ judgments concerning the quality and utility of discrete works. My point here is that the emergent archive of tragoedia sacra initially took shape as a pedagogical project with (as Erasmus and Melanchthon illustrate at length) particular import to theology and exegesis. Antique tragedy served an increasingly important purpose in humanist curricula, laying bare fundamental elements of ­ hilological Greek and Latin grammar and rhetoric, preparing students for exacting p study of Scripture as well as Patristic texts. But tragoedia sacra, much more so than classical tragedies by Euripides, Sophocles, or Seneca, also enabled students to see connections between tragic form, tragic affects, and Scriptural fabulae. Consider, for instance, tragic depictions of the career of John the Baptist as well as his execution at the hands of the tyrant Herod—a plot depicted in Schöpper’s Ectrachelistes, Buchanan’s Baptistes, and Nicholas Grimald’s tragedy Archipropheta, first printed in 1548. If antique tragedies (to say nothing of the abiding medieval tradition of tragedy that persists into early modernity) illuminated the vicissitudes of political life—if works like the Senecan Octavia or Euripides’ Troades or Hecuba foregrounded the role of violence and necessity among the nobility, challenging audiences to cultivate thoughtful and appropriate responses to a fundamentally tragic world—the tragic presentation of the Gospels made these issues seem all the more urgent to Christian audiences. Herod and John the Baptist are tragic companions, the former evincing “a certain terror of divine judgment and horror of sin,” the latter, “a happy, secure, and confident sense of divine mercy, but moderate and diffident as regards the self, and a joyful trust in God and his promises, with holy 142  Schöpper only attracted controversy when his Monomachia Davidis et Goliae, in which the adolescent David serves as a “type of Christ” [Christi . . . typum] and Goliath “signifies the devil” [adumbrat Diabolum], was apparently misread as an allegory of current events, pitting the unassuming champions of Reformation against the profane potency of the papacy—a popular reading of Reformation in sympathetic circles. There is virtually no basis for this interpretation in Schöpper’s text, however, which avoids contentious topics in the interest of pedagogy. Dietl [2013], 160–1; and Schöpper [1551], Avr–Avv, Eiir–Eiiir. 143  See Watson [1964], 12–37, 43.



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and spiritual pleasure in doing good”—that is to say, Herod and John realize the extremes to which Bucer testifies in his account of sacred tragedy.144 In his treatment of the birth of tragedy, moreover, Melanchthon emphasizes how tragedy was “useful in shaping habits [mores] and in cultivating eloquence, as examples of both habits and eloquence are more noble in tragedies than in comedies.”145 Tragedy, in other words, teaches mores and style, inviting both rhetorical and ethical imitation. Insofar as Christ’s Passion was increasingly depicted as a tragedy in the sixteenth century—beginning with Quintianus Stoa’s Theoandrothanatos, de Loches’s Christus Xilonicus, and the publication in Greek and Latin of the Euripidean Christus Patiens attributed to Gregory of Nazianzen—such works invited audiences to consider the meaning and possibility of Imitatio Christi in tragic terms.146 Grimald even describes his Christus Redivivus (1543) as a “comoedia tragica, sacra & nova” because, in his depiction of Christ’s burial and Resurrection, “great things had been interwoven with the small, joyous with sad, obscure with manifest, incredible with probable . . . [and] just as the first act yields to tragic sorrow, in order that the subject matter may keep its title, so the fifth and last adapts itself to delight and joy.”147 Tragic or tragicomic depictions of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection realize another set of extremes: affective extremes, expressing inordinate sadness and horror as well as boundless joy. In this case, to paraphrase Bucer, the most pious affects are indeed expressed most clearly in tragedy as audiences encounter a peerless example of obedience and patience, of faith and mercy.148 Like Bucer, the tragedians themselves testify to the pedagogical value of tragoedia sacra as well as its ethical capacities, moving audiences, reforming and refining passions and mores alike. A PHILOSOPHICAL POETICS Bucer had access to this considerable archive of tragoedia sacra as well as pathbreaking works of humanist scholarship, all linking tragedy directly to theology and exegesis. But Bucer also betrays his familiarity with Aristotle’s Poetics, referring directly to peripeteia and indirectly to the philosophical ambit of tragedy in the Poetics—that is, its capacity to depict “the kinds of things that might occur and are possible in terms of probability or necessity,” not merely “actual events” [1451a.36–1451b.1; original emphasis]. Bucer is certainly not alone in recognizing this aspect of tragedy in the Poetics. Indeed, Grimald is most likely referring to the Poetics when he claims that tragicomedy (or, specifically, “comoedia tragica”) mixes things “incredible with probable,” capitalizing at once on comic awe and tragic probability. In this sense tragedy is an expedient philosophical resource underwriting exacting and poetic studies of Scripture, faith, and devotional life.

144  B, 351; Bucer [1955], 257. 145  MCoh, 569. 146  Parente [1985], 351–68; and Shuger [1994], 128–34. 147  Grimald [1969], 108–9. 148  Bucer [1955], 257.

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Readers are generally familiar with the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics across the sixteenth century. Bernard Weinberg called the turn to the Poetics “the signal event in the history of literary criticism in the Italian Renaissance”—a statement that, by the end of the seventeenth century, would also hold true for France, England, and the Netherlands, to say nothing of the cultures of Neo-Latinity that prospered across nations, confessions, and continents during this period.149 As Tanya Pollard and Micha Lazarus have shown, the widely available Poetics, together with a growing archive of Greek tragedy, impacted English criticism in the sixteenth century, much earlier and in a richer variety of ways than scholars have heretofore recognized.150 Thus Aristotle, together with Euripides and Sophocles, served as important interlocutors in the development of early modern poetics long before the advent of Neoclassicism. The renowned Aldine edition of the Greek text of the Poetics was published in Venice in 1508, followed by an edition published in Basel in 1531, part of the Opera Aristotelis edited by Erasmus and Simon Grynaeus. Among the most important early Latin translations were those by Giorgio Valla, first printed in 1498; Alessandro de’ Pazzi [Paccius] in 1536; and Antonio Riccoboni in 1579.151 Francesco Robortello and Pietro Vettori [Victorius] produced exhaustive and influential commentaries (in 1548 and 1560, respectively) that rendered the text accessible in Greek and Latin, blunting the strangeness of the work and making it applicable to early modern poetry and poetics. The progressive spread of the Poetics from Renaissance Italy throughout Northern Europe is well documented, as is its reception and “assimilation”; readers strove to ­harmonize the Poetics with Horace’s Ars Poetica as well as with foundational rhetorical works by Cicero, Quintilian, and Aristotle himself.152 Preoccupied with the narrative of Renaissance and recovery, however, scholars often obscure the real continuities between early modern interpretations of the Poetics and the translations, detailed redactions, and florilegia from the Poetics that had been available across Europe since the thirteenth century. It is misleading, in other words, to describe early modern engagements with Aristotle’s text solely in terms of “rediscovery.” Renaissance readers took frequent recourse to medieval sources in their efforts to understand the Poetics. At the outset of the sixteenth century, for instance, readers tended to follow their medieval predecessors, locating the Poetics not only as an extension of the Rhetoric but also as a part of the Aristotelian Organon, pertaining directly to logic and the exercise of reason. This is the case across many poetics that emerge in the period; even as the earliest editors, translators, and commentators brought Aristotle’s Poetics to bear on poetic theory and practice, they often recognized its primary investments in credibility, probability, necessity, and syllogism—issues that were much more the province of dialectic, physics, and metaphysics than poetry. Medieval interpreters affirmed the 149  Weinberg [1961], 349; Herrick [1930], 8–79; Rapin [1674]; Smit [1959], 240–392; de Haas [1998], 1–48. 150  Pollard [2012]; [2013]; [2017]; Lazarus [2015]; [2016]. 151  See Valla [1515]; Aristotle [1537]; and [1970]. 152  Javitch [1999], 53–76; Smith [1988], 37–58; Weinberg [1961], 349–563; Herrick [1946]; and Hathaway [1962], 205–300.



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foundational relationship between the Poetics and logic, discovering in poetry what Deborah L. Black describes as “the production of scientific certitude by means of apodeictic methods.”153 Insofar as it directed attention to certainty and credibility, poetics soon emerged as a vehicle for religious reform. In his 1491 Apologeticus de Ratione Poeticae Artis, for instance, Girolamo Savonarola argued that poetry at large is best defined in relation to logic and philosophy, not meter or style.154 Savonarola, who seems familiar with redactions of the Poetics if not the Poetics itself, posits that poetry is most useful when “through exercise it teaches men to purify their souls, just as certain philosophers taught” [per exercitium docet homines purgare animos, ut philosophi quidam docuerunt]—probably a reference to Aristotle’s famed katharsis— before he demonstrates that the best poetry “preaches grace and supernatural gifts through which the mind may be raised higher and the mortal body may be more perfectly purified, partaking in those aspects of blessedness which have been longed for.”155 Unwilling to reduce poetry to rhetoric or dialectic, Savonarola nevertheless affirms its philosophical province and utility against its detractors. Averroës’ Arabic Paraphrase of the Poetics, crucial to myriad humanist attempts to comprehend Aristotle’s work, remained relevant across the sixteenth century and, albeit less directly, into the seventeenth.156 The work did not vanish from the scene once the Greek text of the Poetics appeared, nor did readers cease to reference such established resources in their efforts to make sense of Aristotle’s treatment of tragedy. In fact, new translations of the Paraphrase reflected the degree to which more readers recognized Aristotle’s philosophical preoccupation with tragedy in the Poetics. Writing in a tradition that located both the Poetics and the Rhetoric squarely in the Aristotelian Organon, Averroës examined the apodeictic and syllogistic resources of poetics. However, Averroës interpreted the Poetics as a treatise on epideictic rhetoric, on the ars laudandi—not on “tragedy.”157 In the Arabic text, in other words, Averroës discusses praise instead of tragedy. Tellingly, Hermannus Alemannus follows suit in his 1256 Latin translation of the Paraphrase. Hermannus rarely uses the term tragoedia, even in his rendition of the storied definition of tragedy from Poetics 1449b:23–33. Instead, he demonstrates the “bonitas artis laudandi,” the excellence of the art of praising.158 As foreign as this redaction may seem to modern readers, early moderns still found Hermannus’ translation useful. It was printed at Venice in 1481, together with Hermannus’ version of the Rhetoric, in an edition that lays bare the dialectical purchase of the Poetics.159 Indeed, 153  Black [1990], 4. 154  Savonarola [1982], 246–9; and Goodman [1998], 31–3. 155 Savonarola [1982], 237–8: “per exercitium docet homines purgare animos, ut philosophi quidam docuerunt, sed etiam praedicat gratia et dona supernaturalia, per quae mens altius elevata et perfectius purificata in carne mortali fit particeps beatitudinis desideratae.” 156  On Arabic visions of Aristotle’s Poetics, see Kemal [1991], 1–40. On the translation and reception of Averroës’ commentary see Malette [2009], 583–91; Kelly [1993], 111–25; Boggess [1970], 278–94; Dod [1982], 45–79; Black [1990], 1–16, 209–58; Hardison [1970], 57–81; and Dox [2004], 95–124. 157  Black [1990], 1–16, 209–58; and Hardison [1970], 57–81. 158  AV, 46–7. 159  William of Moerbeke’s 1278 Latin translation seems to have exercised little influence in early modernity. On Hermannus’ importance, see the 1481 Venetian edition, corrected and edited by Lancilottus de Zerlis: Averroës [1481].

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Hermannus’ Latin Paraphrase appeared in print before the editio princeps of the Greek text itself. And even after the Poetics was available in Greek and Latin, new Latin translations of the medieval Paraphrase continued to appear, retaining the philosophical weight of the work while sharpening and updating the translation itself. Abram de Balmes based his 1523 translation on Todros Todrosi’s 1337 Hebrew version of Averroës; Jacob Mantino, in turn, revisited Todrosi’s Hebrew for his own Latin Averroës, printed in 1550. In both cases the new translations reflected the growing familiarity with Greek tragedy across Europe, replacing ars laudandi with tragoedia. When Venetian printers compiled Aristotle’s complete works for publication in 1562, together with Averroës’ commentaries, they included the Paraphrase.160 These magisterial Venetian editions insist on continuity with the late medieval tradition, locating the Poetics in relation to rhetoric and the Organon, framing the work as a detailed treatment of demonstration and argument, of probability, necessity, and credibility. More to the point, early modern translations of Averroës’ Paraphrase emphasized tragedy and its connections to dialectic. The medieval Paraphrase establishes the philosophical province of the Poetics, urging poets and orators alike to observe rules regarding probability and necessity, for the sake of credibility.161 Averroës chides those poets who “represent rational beings by means of irrational things,” and affirms in no uncertain terms that “representations must be made by means of what exists or is presumed to exist . . . or by means of what probably exists, not by means of what is improbable or may just as well exist as not.”162 The poet, even more so than the orator, must depict things as they exist or should exist, according to reason and nature. Hermannus renders this in exacting terms, arguing that the representation of things improbable or unnecessary “is more suited to rhetoric than to poetry” [magis conveniens est rethorice [sic] quam poetrie].163 Poetry and its effects depend upon credibility, “for when there is doubt about the myth or something brings forth doubt about it, it does not accomplish its intended action . . . because as long as a man is not convinced by it, he will not be terrified of it nor feel pity about it.”164 A story worthy of feeling must be credible. Foremost, then, is the constitution of the “myth,” the Greek μύθος—what Hermannus and Mantino alike call the “fabula.”165 The medieval 160  Averroës [1962], 217v–229v. 161  AB, 138; AV, 73. 162  AB, 139, 138. 163  AB, 138; AV, 73. Mantino renders this passage in similar terms. 164  AB, 93. 165  Mantino’s translation of Averroës’ Paraphrase is very different than Hermannus’. Both probe the apodeictic, syllogistic, and epideictic utility of the Poetics, but in markedly different idioms. Note, first, the different subjects of the respective translations. Averroës claims (in Arabic) that “eulogies ought to be composed not of simple representations but of a mixture of the kinds of discoveries and reversals and of the representations that impose fear-provoking and tender affections upon the souls”—a process that is achieved through the representation of virtues and vices. Hermannus translates this as follows: “oportet . . . ut non sit composition carminum laudativorum ex imitationibus simplicibus, sed permixtis ex speciebus, scilicet ex speciebus directionis et ex speciebus circulationis et ex imitationibus motivis seu inductivis passionum timiditatis aut miserationis moventibus animas.” Mantino, in turn, renders the section in very different terms: “Quoniam igitur Tragoediae compositio . . . non debet esse ex simplici imitatione, sed ex diversis generibus implexa, videlicet ex generibus agnitionis et generibus peripetiae ac terribilium miserabilium affectionum animi imitatrix, quae scilicet animum movet.” Mantino replaces Hermannus’ earlier “carmines laudativorum” with the more familiar (and, from an Aristotelian perspective, faithful) “tragoediae”—“tragedies” for “songs of praise.” And Mantino also takes recourse



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Paraphrase directed tragedians to compose credible fabulae, avoiding things “monstrous and portentous” that do not inspire fear or sorrow, eschewing things “impossible” in order to illustrate “that which is or is believed to be, like figuring things evil by means of demons, or by means of that which is possible in many cases or in a few cases or indiscriminately in either direction.”166 Demons or contingent ­natural forces, insofar as they are considered true or real, contribute to the credibility and verisimilitude (or probability) of the fabula. Averroës used these criteria to praise Scripture. He was in fact the first to collate the Poetics and Holy Writ. But he did not refer to the Bible, to either the Old or New Testament; instead he points directly to the Quran to explain recognition, reversal, and effective tragic structure in the Poetics. The Quran, Averroës claims, is replete with fabulae that compel audiences to virtuous action, identifying many “stories of the Law” [historias legis] as “tragic stories that value action” [illae historiae Tragicae actionem indicent]—his chief example being the story of Joseph and his brothers in Yusuf.167 This medieval Arabic exposition of recognition and peripeteia persists into early modernity, although later commentators refer to Genesis 37–45 rather than the Quran. Indeed, Heinsius reiterates the account of Joseph and his brothers in his 1611 De Tragoediae Constitutione just as his one-time comrade Hugo Grotius developed the episode at length in his tragedy Sophompaneas (1635).168 The idea that Joseph and his brothers demonstrate tragic recognition is a medieval Arabic interpretation of the Poetics, recruiting Holy Writ to explain Aristotle’s text. Many early modern readers accepted Averroës’ interpretation of the Poetics, even tacitly. Recognizing that most of the Greek Poetics is in fact devoted to tragedy and “enactive mimesis” [τῷ πράττειν μιμήσεως, 1459a.15], period poetics couple Averroës’ emphases on probability, necessity, and credibility with comments on tragedy and form. Later interpreters, in other words, followed Averroës, examining Aristotle’s treatment of causality—albeit now with reference to tragedy, presenting the best tragedies as object lessons in natural cause and effect, enabling audiences to comprehend a complete action, to understand its “unity and wholeness” as “a probable or necessary sequence of events” (1451a.2–3, 13–14). In the Poetics, remember, tragedy is “mimesis not of persons but of action and life” (1450a.15–16), and action and life generally take shape according to comprehensible rational ­patterns or rules. Thus Aristotle insists that “it is not the poet’s function to relate to stock Latin translations of the storied Aristotelian anagnorisis and peripeteia, replacing Hermannus’ vague “directio” with “agnitio,” his “circulatio” with “peripetia.” In other words, translations of the medieval Paraphrase were revised to reflect recent Latin translations of the Poetics itself, translations that were integral in establishing a familiar conceptual language proper to tragedy. See AB, 91; AV, 56, 55; and Averroës [1962], 223r, 222v. 166  AV, 56, 73; Averroës [1962], 225r–225v, 228r: “quae est, vel existimatur esse, ut confingere malos per daemones, vel per id, [quod] est [possibile] ut in pluribus vel in paucioribus vel ad utrumlibet indifferenter.” Mantino’s translation is formulaic here, related to modal syllogistics, insofar as he attempts to communicate terms concerning contingency and possibility in nature. See Lagerlund [2000], 25–52. 167  AV, 55; Averroës [1962], 223r. 168  AV, 55; Averroës [1962], 222v–223r; PT, 37; DTC, 53–4. See also Al-Qur’ān [1984], 200–9 [12:4–104].

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actual events”—that is, the poet does not merely depict events that have occurred—but rather “the kinds of things that might occur and are possible in terms of probability or necessity”: The difference between the historian and the poet is not that between using verse or prose; Herodotus’ work could be versified and would be just as much a kind of history in verse as in prose. No, the difference is this: that the one relates actual events, the other the kinds of things that might occur. Consequently, poetry is more ­philosophical and more elevated than history, since poetry relates more of the universal, while history relates particulars. “Universal” means the kinds of things which it suits a certain kind of person to say or do, in terms of probability or necessity. (1451a.35–1451b.9)169

This is particularly true of tragedy. Tragedy emerges in the surviving Poetics as distinct from epic and comedy due to its aversion to matters irrational. Aristotle recognizes that “a sense of awe” [τὸ θαυμαστόν] is crucial to tragedy, and that “the irrational” [τὸ ἄλογον] is “the chief cause of awe,” but he stipulates that the success or quality of a tragedy still hinges on the credibility of agency, subtly suggesting that effective tragedians find alternative sources for awe (1460a.11–19).170 Probability and necessity, in fact, serve as the bases by which tragedies are composed and judged. Philosophical criteria govern virtually every aspect of tragic poetry in the Poetics. Probability and necessity dictate the appropriate duration and magnitude of tragedy. With respect to plot, Aristotle insists that “ideally there should be no irrationality [ἄλογον], or, failing that, it should lie outside the plot” (1460a.28–9).171 In addition, Aristotle declares that “recognition ensuing from the events themselves, where the emotional impact comes from a probable sequence,” is “best of all” (1455a.16–19).172 Aristotle claims, moreover, that “one should always seek necessity or probability” in tragic ἦθος—that is, “character” or mos—“so that for such a person to say or do such things is necessary or probable” (1454a.32–6).173 Tragic mimesis is philosophical insofar as it foregrounds causality in nature, causality which proceeds according to probability (so often translated as “verisimilitude”— that is, as an accurate and credible depiction of reality) or necessity. Tragedy is an apodeictic resource. It lays bare its connections to rhetoric and dialectic when it deals with arguments or propositions, best achieving its aims when audiences deem such matters credible. References to the medieval Paraphrase persist in early modern editions and commentaries insofar as Averroës and his translators draw attention to the philosophical province of the Poetics and the ­philosophical ambit of tragedy. It is in this sense that Aristotle and his early modern interlocutors ask us to rethink the relationship between tragedy in the Poetics and tragedy in performance. There is of course no shortage of accounts of early modern stage tragedy in Latin, Greek, or myriad vernacular languages. It is easy to assume that tragedy is best defined in relation to performance because it so often is. But Aristotle introduces a critical distinction between plot [μῦθος]—that is, the very “soul” [ψυχή] of ­tragedy—and spectacle [ὄψις], a distinction that the figures that populate this 169  AP, 59 [my emphasis], 58–61. 172  AP, 86–7. 173  AP, 80–1.

170  AP, 122–3.

171  AP, 124–5.



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study exploit to pious and precise ends. Tragedy, Aristotle contends, employs “enactment” [δρώντων], not “narrative” [ἀπαγγελίας], which is to say that it “represent[s] people in direct action” (1449b.26, 1448a.27–8).174 Thought, language, and action, in other words, are attributed directly to discrete personae, without any mediating narrative voice. But this mode of “enactment” is distinct from spectacle, which includes elements of performance such as costumes, props, and stage-playing. These arts of spectacle are distinct from the art of poetry. As such, Aristotle marginalizes spectacle across the Poetics, presenting it as integral to tragedy only insofar as the tragedian does not rely on such “material resources” to achieve katharsis. In fact, the best tragedies achieve their effects solely through the constitution of the plot, independent of its spectacular presentation; “the plot should be so structured,” Aristotle argues, “that, even without seeing it performed, the person who hears the events that occur experiences horror and pity at what comes about (as one would feel when hearing the plot of the Oedipus)” (1453b.3–6).175 Aristotle considers tragedy superior to epic because it “possesses all epic’s resources,” including plot and meter, but it also incorporates “music and spectacle, which engender the most vivid pleasures” (1462a.15–17).176 In this sense “tragedy has vividness in both reading and performance” (1462a.17–18).177 But Aristotle ultimately invites readers to consider spectacle superfluous, as though it is at best supplemental to tragedy. This is crucial, Aristotle notes, because vulgar elements of performance— excessive movement or effusive acting, for instance—appeal to the tastes of “crude spectators” (1462a.1–5), blunting the precision of tragic plot, often keeping tragedy from “achieving the goal of its mimesis.”178 Aristotle marks the distinction between artes poeticae and artes histrionicae here, where the faults and indulgences of the latter do not necessarily reflect the quality of the former. He duly imports a term from stagecraft when he warns that a machine, a stage contrivance or (familiarly) a “deus ex machina” [μηχανή], should also be avoided in plots. Aristotle’s comments on stage machinery originate in his critique of spectacle where a god is hoisted in via a device to suddenly resolve a plot. In this sense, the machine or device also interrupts or fundamentally alters causality in the drama, preventing audiences from apprehending a necessary or probable course of events. In many cases, the intervening god or device challenges a tragedy’s claim to verisimilitude as divinity, Aristotle suggests, is “irrational” [ἄλογον] or at least subject to different laws than human actions (1454b.1–6).179 The best plots, he insists, are resolved without recourse to a machine, without a miracle or intervening deity which ultimately distracts audiences from probability and necessity. Aristotle’s is not an attack on miracles per se, particularly since many tragic plots can only be satisfactorily resolved by a device or machine—a point that is not lost on early modern readers for whom God’s providence is fundamentally miraculous.

174  AP, 46–7, 34–5.    175  AP, 72–5 [my emphasis]. 176  AP, 138–9. 177  AP, 138–9. 178  AP, 136–7.

179  AP, 80–1.

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Aristotle’s point, rather, is that a device generally disrupts the unity of action so crucial to the plot and “overall structure” [καθόλου, 1449b.7].180 Just as: a unitary mimesis has a unitary object, so too the plot, since it is mimesis of an action, should be of a unitary and indeed whole action; and the component events should be so structured that if any is displaced or removed, the sense of the whole is disturbed and dislocated: since that whose presence or absence has no clear significance is not an integral part of the whole. (1451a.29–35)181

This is precisely the sense of unity which Castelvetro affirms in his forensic account of tragedy, the account with which I began and which makes the philosophical stakes of tragedy explicit. And this is duly the vision of tragedy which reformers, Reformers, and sacred tragedians marshal to pious ends in the sixteenth century. D R A M AT I S P E R S O N A E Bucer is thus quite familiar with antique tragedy, tragoedia sacra, and early modern accounts of tragedy that emerged in conversation with the Poetics, all in the interest of pedagogy, piety, and reform. In this sense, De Regno Christi is a testament to the development of tragedy across the sixteenth century, particularly with an eye to its theological applications. The figures to which I attend across Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World take this convergence of resources as a point of departure, as the basis for more direct and exacting Reformed poetics, more attuned to the issues and controversies that define later generations of critics and theologians across Reformation Europe. After all, the religious purview of tragedy changes significantly around 1550. Whereas earlier tragedians and critics generally avoided controversy, later figures employed tragedy to deliberately sectarian ends—a reflection, no doubt, of the increasingly bitter divisions between congregations that solidified and intensified as Reformation and Counter-Reformation continued apace. This is not yet apparent in Bucer’s account of dramata sacra. Nevertheless, works like Naogeorgus’ Pammachius or Theodore de Bèze’s Abraham Sacrifiant (1550) became much more typical in this new milieu, as were controversial or topical tragedies produced by Jesuits, works pitched directly to Reformation or Counter-Reformation audiences.182 Around 1550, in other words, tragedy is a contested resource that is increasingly directed to polemical or catechistical ends.183 I address this change in Chapter  1, “Reformation Tragedy and Revelation: David Pareus’ Tragic Typology,” demonstrating how Reformed dramatists and theologians alike turned to tragedy to comprehend escalating tensions in Reformation Europe. Works like Naogeorgus’ Pammachius, Negri’s Tragedia intitolata Libero 180  AP, 44–5. 181  AP, 58–9. 182  Street [1983], 7–59; Valentin [2001], 197–234; Parente [1981], 156–80; and Hoxby [2015], 200–57. 183  While it is far beyond the scope of this study to illustrate this point at any length, comedy has a different trajectory in this period. Comediae sacrae that circulated under the ensign “Terentius Christianus” continued to appeal to readers across regions and confessions.



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Arbitrio, and Foxe’s Christus Triumphans reframed the events depicted in the book of Revelation in deliberately tragic terms; the influential Heidelberg theologian Pareus, in turn, described Revelation itself as a tragedy, invoking poetic concepts for exegetical purposes, asserting a fundamental relationship between Scripture, tragedy, and the shape of human history. Tragedy, they argued, is crucial to the experience of Reformation—requiring, for the tragedians, flexible and experimental notions of form and performance and, for Pareus, supple approaches to tragedy and typology. For these diverse authors, moreover, tragedy far exceeds dramatic performance; while they exploited its spectacular resources, tragedy also afforded them a formal language through which plot, history, and the meaning of Scripture became tangible and intelligible. Taking Erasmus’, Melanchthon’s, and Bucer’s theses on tragedy as points of departure, Naogeorgus, Negri, Foxe, and especially Pareus affirm the degree to which poetry and poetics informed theology as well as how Reformation proceeded as a series of poetic and theological developments. This abiding relationship between poetics, theology, and Reformation is apparent in Lodovico Castelvetro’s Poetica D’Aristotele Vulgarizzata, Et Sposta (1570) as well. In his influential contribution to poetics, Castelvetro, a Modenese scholar who was condemned by the Roman Inquisition in 1560, marshaled Aristotelian notions of tragedy towards a thorough critique of Roman Catholic theatrical and devotional practices. Emphasizing the philosophical as well as the rhetorical vision of tragedy in the ancient Poetics, Castelvetro relies on Erasmian and Melanchthonian notions of accommodation to render Aristotle’s work intelligible. Thus in Chapter 2, “Lodovico Castelvetro’s Heterodox Poetics: Tragic Accommodation,” I illustrate how Castelvetro turned to the Poetics to distinguish between edifying, didactic tragedies and the meager capacities of their audiences. Castelvetro insists, after Aristotle, that tragedy is an exacting philosophical form, and the Poetics ­enables him to sharpen Reformed arguments concerning faith and authority. Nevertheless, Castelvetro also affirms the importance of performance and, against Aristotle, contends that spectacle and stage-playing are integral to tragedy insofar as they accommodate otherwise difficult or forbidding concepts to diverse audiences. Castelvetro’s is a Melanchthonian interpretation of the Poetics, foregrounding accommodation and the edifying effects of performance. Where Castelvetro defended spectacle and stage-playing, however, his English contemporary John Rainolds followed Aristotle to the letter, mobilizing the ­philosophical account of tragedy in the Poetics against theater in the name of Reformation. Rainolds, a Puritan theologian and Hellenist most famous for his resolute disdain for stage plays, is faithful to an anti-theatrical Aristotle, an Aristotle for whom spectacle and histrionic performance are anathema to tragedy—the subject of Chapter 3, “John Rainolds, Hamlet, and the Anti-Theatrical Aristotle.” Having honed his vision of tragedy in comprehensive lectures on rhetoric as well as polemical refutations of Catholicism, Rainolds articulated his program in disputations and letters during the theatrical controversies at Oxford in the 1590s, many of which appeared in print in Th’overthrow of stage-playes (1599). In his heated exchanges with the Oxford jurist Alberico Gentili, for instance, Rainolds betrays his deep suspicion of spectacle and stage-playing as they relate to mendacia and

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mendacia officiosa—that is, to species of falsehood subject to debate since ­antiquity—offering a comprehensive defense of tragedy at the expense of histrionic performance. Committed to the Reformation of the university and nation at large, Rainolds recognizes the value of tragedy while simultaneously disparaging ­spectacle, distinguishing licit recitative enactment from illicit histrionic modes of presentation that traffic in sin and compromise the rhetorical and dialectical precision of tragedy. While Rainolds’ program for Reformation was not without its enemies, no less a figure than William Shakespeare responded to him in Hamlet, defending the rich resources of spectacle and stage-playing available to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, offering a forensic vision of tragedy in The Murder of Gonzago that counters Rainolds’ Aristotelian assumptions about tragedy. Castelvetro and Rainolds promote Reformation by way of poetics, directing audiences to tragedy, harnessing its rhetorical and dialectic resources. The influential Leiden philologist Daniel Heinsius, in turn, offers an even more comprehensive philosophical version of tragedy in the service of Reformation, relocating debates concerning providence, predestination, and revelation to poetics. In Chapter 4, “Necessity, Between Tragedy and Predestination: Daniel Heinsius and De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611),” I illustrate how Heinsius’ path-breaking treatise De Tragoediae Constitutione—a commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics—belongs not only to the Arminian Controversy but also to larger debates concerning action and salvation in early modernity. Theologies of election and reprobation ­necessarily traffic in mystery, taxing the limits of the human understanding. Tragedy, however, enables readers to comprehend actions in terms of natural cause and effect; in this sense Heinsius renders divinity intelligible, even tentatively, when he develops Aristotle’s comments concerning necessity and probability (or verisimilitude) as well as his strictures regarding devices and dei ex machinis. Tragedy offers a substantive critical alternative to theology insofar as tragedies foreground the terms and limits of nature and causality—indeed, totality—which more quarrelsome con­ rinciples temporaries relegate to theology. Moreover, Heinsius develops his critical p with an eye to tragoedia sacra. In his Herodes Infanticida, he reframes Scripture as a tragedy, eschewing miracles and theological explanations, demonstrating instead how this key evangelical episode—Herod’s massacre of the innocents—is an all-too-human story of fear, power, ignorance, and interpretation. Heinsius’ major theological interventions are also propositions on tragedy. Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World ends with Miltonic theses on tragedy. In both Chapter 5, “Greek Tragedy and Hebrew Antiquity in John Milton’s 1671 Poems,” and the Conclusion, “Samson Agonistes and the Limits of Tragedy,” I explore Milton’s detailed engagements with tragedy, illustrating his debts to and departures from a Reformation poetics that renders tragedy a precise philosophical and theological resource. Milton was long preoccupied with tragedy; the Trinity Manuscript features drafts for the unfinished tragedy Adam unparadiz’d or Paradise Lost, conceived between 1639 and 1641, as well as a host of topics for historical and sacred tragedies to come.184 His debts to Reformation tragedy, to the tradition 184  Lewalski [2000], 123–4; Milton [1938], 228–45.



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that stretches between Pareus and Heinsius, are patent. It is not until his 1671 poems, however—that is, Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes—that Milton responds directly to Reformed poetics of tragedy, pointing methodically to the limits of tragedy, exposing the extent to which divinity and its agencies exceed and confound the philosophical vision of the Poetics. In Paradise Regain’d, for instance, Milton’s Jesus relocates the birth of tragedy from Athens to the Levant, claiming that tragedy belongs first to the Hebrews. Greek tragedy is thus derivative and degraded; Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristotle, to say nothing of the traditions to which they gave rise, appropriated tragic forms and resources from Hebrew ­antiquity. Milton advances Pareus’ theses on tragedy and Scripture beyond the scope of Pareus’ own text, arguing for a more comprehensive Christian archive of tragedy as well as a daring account of tragedy’s sacred origins. In Samson Agonistes, moreover, Milton deftly investigates the extent to which Castelvetro’s notion of forensic ­tragedy or Heinsius’ philosophical Poetics are able to render divinity intelligible. If Reformation tragedy offers pointed insight into probability and necessity in nature, or serves as an object lesson in immanent causality, Samson Agonistes troubles such pursuits, illuminating instead the fundamental limits of both tragedy and human comprehension. In Heinsius’ treatments of tragedy, for instance, miracles are rare, and intervening gods generally confound otherwise laudable attempts to understand causality in nature. Divine intervention is no less difficult to discern in Samson Agonistes; Milton is skeptical, however, of tragedy’s capacity to render either God or totality intelligible as such. The philosophical account of tragedy to which I attend across this book reaches an impasse in Milton’s 1671 poems, works that nonetheless look forward to other philosophical horizons for tragedy in modernity. What follows is not only a study of Reformation poetics and poetic theology, it is also a historical account of the origins of a notably literary criticism. Pareus, for instance, delivers a moveable version of typology that is closer to modern literary criticism than it is to Reformation hermeneutics, independent as it is from the restricted correspondence across Scriptural testaments or dispensations. Castelvetro in turn transports rhetorical and Scriptural notions of accommodation to poetry and theater, training our attention to audience capacity and response. Rainolds’ peculiar interest in recitative performance asks us to think critically about poetics and pedagogy just as Heinsius’ theses on plot and affect look forward to current debates regarding character, affect, and authority in the Humanities. Reformation tragedy occupies an important place in literary history, shaping the more familiar and recognizably literary Neoclassicism of the seventeenth century, critical and poetic work by Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Joost van den Vondel, René Rapin, John Dryden, Thomas Rymer, and the Dutch theatrical collective Nil Volentibus Arduum. The tragedians and theologians in this work share the later Neoclassical preoccupations with form and rigor. So too do they affirm the close proximity between criticism and philosophy. Across Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World, however, poetics—and in particular, tragedy—is never far removed from theological inquiry, from investigations of faith, agency, or divinity. It is generally in its philosophical capacity that tragedy affords Pareus, Castelvetro, Rainolds, Heinsius, and Milton resources for Reform.

PA RT I [P R OTA S I S ] TRAGEDY AND THEOLOGY

1 Reformation Tragedy and Revelation David Pareus’ Tragic Typology St. John, in his Apocalypse, and Daniel likewise sketch many pictures and beasts; yet these pertain not to specific persons but to the totality of Christian churches and [to the various] empires [damit sie doch nicht solche personen, sondern die gantzen Christlichen kirchen, vnd koenigreiche meinen]. And Christ our Lord himself likes to make use of parables and fictions like this in the gospel. Martin Luther, Preface to the Book of Judith (1534)1

When John Milton wanted to legitimate tragedy as a model for Christian poetry and politics, he turned to the Reformed theologian David Pareus, the Heidelberg professor who argued that the book of Revelation is structured like a drama, like a prophetic tragedy with recurring personae, choruses, and discrete acts. Milton cited Pareus’ idiosyncratic reading of Revelation to confirm the import of classical tragedy. Pareus seemed to justify “the rules of Aristotle” as well as “those Dramatick constitutions, wherein Sophocles and Euripides raigne,” while simultaneously demonstrating that Scripture itself is not without considerable poetic merit.2 Christians do not merely use antique drama, appropriating heathen tools as the Israelites appropriated the spoils of Egypt to pious ends; Revelation itself unfolds in a deliberately dramatic fashion and is most legible as such.3 Drama is a Scriptural resource. Nowhere is this more evident than in “the Apocalyps of Saint John,” a “majestic image of a high and stately Tragedy.”4 Pareus himself recognized the novelty of this thesis, readily conceding that his discovery had “hitherto been observed by few men” [à paucis hactenus observata]— or, to be more precise, “I scarcely find the same explicated by anyone” [à quoquam . . . vix explicata invenio].5 But his 1618 Commentary on the Divine Revelation of the Apostle and Evangelist John [In Divinam Apocalypsin  S.  Apostoli et Evangelistae Johannis Commentarius] is more than a historical curiosity and warrants attention beyond 1  Luther [1960], 338; [1961], 5–6. 2  Milton [1953], 813–15; M1671, 66–7. 3  On the spoils of Egypt see Eden [2001], 15–32. 4  Milton [1953], 815. 5  P1622, 24; P1644, 19. Throughout this chapter I either alter Arnold’s translation (often significantly) or offer my own translation as Arnold tends not to acknowledge technical dramatic terms, thus obscuring Pareus’ own knowledge of poetics. Nevertheless, I continue to refer to the 1644 translation, for the ease of the reader. There were, incidentally, several attempts to revive Pareus’ formal claims in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See Cook [1912], 74–80; Düsterdieck [1887], 22–6; and Koester [2014]. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from Revelation in this chapter come from Koester’s 2014 Anchor Yale Bible Edition.

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its relevance to Milton. Indeed, Pareus’ work tells us much about Reformed notions of drama and tragedy, notions that he mobilized to interpret the prophecies in Revelation. In fact, Pareus’ commentary affords us a unique perspective on Revelation itself, a cryptic work that simultaneously invites and resists interpretation. In his creative endeavor to parse the Apocalypse into discrete dramatic visions performed by various personae, reframing Revelation as drama as opposed to historical narrative, Pareus gives new consistency to the work and renews its abilities to both terrify and console. Calvin described God’s creation as a “glorious theater” in which “the whole of mankind is invited and attracted to recognition [agnitionem] of him”; if the world is indeed a stage on which God’s providence is evident, in nature and in daily life, Pareus’ theses on plot and form are intuitive, as is his conviction that his contemporaries bore witness to “that part which contains the epitasis and catastrophe of the struggles of the Church” [eam . . . partem, quae ἐπίτασιν καὶ καταστροφὴν certaminum Ecclesiae continet].6 Where Revelation is a tragedy, he argued, we are privy to its final scenes. In this chapter I introduce Pareus and examine his assumptions about form and tragedy before explaining why he invokes drama to explain the prophecies in Revelation. In the process I lay bare a signal archive of Reformation tragedy, often neglected by modern readers of poetry and theology alike—namely, the volumes of sacred tragedy that circulated internationally in the mid-to-late sixteenth century, in many forms and languages. By his own admission, Pareus began studying Revelation in 1570, guided by his instructor Zacharias Ursinus, the principal architect of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563).7 Once Pareus received his degree and began teaching, he lectured on Revelation, eventually recognizing correspondences across discrete sections of the work. Its repetitive structure became apparent to him, its visions divided “as it were into distinct acts” [quasi actus . . . distinctos].8 In this sense, Pareus’ treatment of Revelation recalls those prominent Reformed tragedies that dramatized and interpreted the events of the Apocalypse. After all, while early reformers and Reformers alike struggled with the canonicity and theology of the Revelation, the most stirring and immediate mid-century meditations on Revelation were in fact dramatic works—in particular, Thomas Naogeorgus’ Pammachius (1538), Francesco Negri’s Tragedia intitolata Libero Arbitrio (1546), and John Foxe’s Christus Triumphans (1556). A generation of Protestant readers and spectators came to Revelation by way of tragedy.9 These dramatic works were particularly important in a period when, as Irena Backus illustrates, many theologians were reluctant to interpret Revelation. Erasmus consistently undermined the authority of the Apocalypse while prominent first- and second-generation Protestant 6  Calvin [1960], 72, 63; [2011], 62, 55; P1622, 34; P1644, 29. 7  P1622, 26; P1644, 21. 8  P1622, 26; P1644, 21. 9  The earliest attempt to frame the events pertaining to the Last Judgment in Revelation 20 by way of classical tragedy is Ioannes Franciscus Quintianus Stoa’s Theocrisis tragoedia, one of the final works in his comprehensive Christiana Opera (1514). Quintianus Stoa’s work was long out of fashion by the 1570s, when Pareus began his studies of Revelation. Quintianus Stoa [1514], lxxv–cxxv. On Quintianus Stoa and tragedy see Leo [2016].



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authors largely “condemned the book (Zwingli, Luther) or ignored it (Melanchthon, Bucer, Calvin).”10 By the 1570s and 1580s, when Pareus first turned to Revelation, there were important Protestant commentaries available to him. Sebastian Meyer (1539), Theodore Bibliander (1545), Heinrich Bullinger (1557), Augustin Marlorat (1561), and David Chytraeus (1564) all offered interpretations of the Apocalypse, and the field grew considerably as Pareus honed his lectures and prepared his commentary for publication in 1618, eventually including influential works by Nicolas Colladon (1581), Francisus Junius (1591), and Thomas Brightman (1611).11 But Pareus’ inventive theses on Revelation and tragedy also draw from an archive of Protestant drama, harking back to early Protestant dramata sacra and the Reformed tragedians’ specific contributions to theology. Pareus’ commentary on Revelation is in this sense an index of the Reformation literary imagination, illustrating the degree to which poetry and poetics informed theology, the degree to which the Reformation proceeded as a series of poetic as well as theological developments. This chapter is thus a study of Pareus’ commentary on Revelation as well as the signal works of Reformation tragedy that shaped it, intended to round out the picture of vernacular drama and Reformation we find in exemplary works by Paul Whitfield White, Gary  K.  Waite, Jennifer Waldron, and Adrian Streete, among others. Many studies of Protestant drama detail the careers of major dramatists— vernacular poets like Hans Sachs and John Bale, or humanists writing in Latin like George Buchanan, Thomas Watson, and Nicholas Grimald; others compare latemedieval civic plays and mystères with Reformation and Counter-Reformation performances of liturgy and Scripture; others yet point to plays written by prominent Reformers: Heinrich Buillinger’s Lucretia und Brutus (1526), for instance, or Théodore de Bèze’s tragedy Abraham sacrifiant (1550).12 Such studies illustrate how theologians and politicians employed drama to disseminate Protestant ideas, showing how plays communicated key concepts to lay audiences. What distinguishes this chapter from these others is, first, that I consider tragedies by Naogeorgus, Negri, and Foxe as substantive works of theology, as meditations on Revelation written in a period when Protestant commentaries on the Apocalypse were atypical. These works expose the dynamic and reflexive relationship between poetry and theology, and illustrate how dramatic works were often sites for theological debate and inquiry. In this case, dramatic debates and innovations preceded developments in more traditional genres of theological writing. Dramatists, moreover, seized opportunities to draw the Revelation into daily life, as a prophetic 10  Backus [2000], 3–13, 35. 11  See Meyer [1539]; Bibliander [1545]; Bullinger [1557]; Marlorat [1561]; Chytraeus [1564]; Colladon [1583], although the first edition was published in 1581; Junius [1591]; and Brightman [1611]. Moreover, Richard Bauckham offers concise introductions to several early Protestant exegetes—for instance, Francis Lambert and Sebastian Meyer. See Bauckham [1978], 258–76; P1622, 17, 26; P1644, 12, 21. 12  See, for instance, Campbell [1959], 141–260; Parente [1987], 9–94; White [1993]; [2008], 66–195; Waldron [2013]; Waite [2000]; Ehrstine [2002]; Streete [2009]; Raath and Freitas [2005]; Street [1983], 21–9; and Lyons [2015], 21–37.

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account of the Reformation and the ongoing persecution of the elect, a divine plot that both the pious and impious must perform and endure, by necessity. Tragedy makes this necessity felt, enabling theologians, poets, and audiences alike to comprehend how the devastating and tumultuous events in Revelation proceed with God’s permission, as part of a plan. These dramatists also employed tragic forms and languages to parse the disparate elements and episodes in Revelation, emphasizing how the truly tragic experience of the Church under Antichrist might fit into a larger comic plot that foregrounds God’s glory and ends with the salvation of the elect and the righteous damnation of the reprobate. In this way tragedians experimented with genre, adapting antique rules and models rather freely. Drama, as opposed to history, gave dramatists leave to explore alternatives to chronology, to set or reset the events of Revelation in sequence. Naogeorgus, Negri, and Foxe claim tragedy as a theological genre on par with the commentary or ecclesiastical history. After demonstrating how key works of Reformation tragedy shaped Reformed exegeses of Revelation, I explain how Pareus employed poetic resources to render Scripture intelligible. Pareus effectively imports poetic terms into a conventional theological genre, the commentary. Like the tragedians before him, he uses dramatic structure and notions of tragedy to make sense of Revelation and to draw history into the orbit of prophecy. But Pareus also implies, after Aristotle, that tragedy presents a powerful alternative to history, foregrounding plot and causality over more prosaic notions of character and circumstance. Revelation, as a tragedy, complicates linear or chronological approaches to history and traffics in enigmatic and capacious “types” or personae instead of characters. It is also a repetitive work, he argues, presenting a series of discrete visions instead of a single unified plot, each of which is structured as a tragedy; each vision, in turn, offers a different dramatic perspective on the same fundamental matters—namely, the tragedy of Antichrist, the emergence, reign, and inevitable collapse of the papacy, under which the true church suffered and continues to suffer. In this manner Revelation unfolds through dramatic recapitulation, as the same matters are represented in diverse ways. Taking these observations on tragedy as points of departure, Pareus marshals his tragic reading of Revelation against his chief exegetical adversary, the Spanish Jesuit Luis de Alcázar, the author of the Vestigatio Arcani Sensus in Apocalypsi (1614). In the process, Pareus also offers an innovative notion of Scriptural form and typology that owes more to Reformation tragedies than to Reformation hermeneutics. In Pareus’ commentary, formal and poetic claims about Revelation are duly claims about prophecy. As prophecy, Revelation represents a future that is only apparent to God, the true author of the work. Pareus thus foregrounds a fundamental problem concerning mimesis and divinity—namely, the degree to which future events may be rendered legible to all-too-human audiences. Revelation is not merely a depiction of ecclesiastical history. It employs abstract types and personae and proceeds by recapitulation to present matters which have not yet come to pass. And to this end Pareus discovers tragedy as a prophetic genre, insisting that what is prophetic in Revelation is also tragic.



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D AV I D PA R E U S , O R I G E N , A N D G E N R E Born in Frankenstein in Silesia in 1548, David Pareus ranks among those early modern theologians who were quite prominent in their moment but who, for a variety of reasons, seldom appear in modern magisterial accounts of the Reformation.13 He began his theological studies in 1566 under Ursinus at the Collegium Sapientiae in Heidelberg and spent his early career as a minister and schoolmaster in the Palatinate. After proving his acumen in several key theological debates—notably, he defended Calvin’s Trinitarian orthodoxy against the Lutheran theologian and dramatist Aegidius Hunnius’ charges of “Judaizing”—Pareus was named Professor of the Old Testament at the Collegium in 1598 and, later, Professor of the New Testament in 1602.14 Among his more controversial works was his 1613 commentary on Romans, in which, according to W. B. Patterson, “he argued that where the magistrates are tyrannical, subjects may, under the direction of the lesser magistrates, defend themselves, the commonwealth, and the true religion”—holding fast to Calvin’s position and, in the process, making an enemy of King James VI and I of England.15 On the continent, however, Pareus was a widely respected theologian, on par with his Heidelberg colleagues Girolamo Zanchius and Daniel Tossanus. He wrote virulently against prominent Jesuits and was chosen to represent the Palatinate at the Synod of Dort (an honor he declined due to his advanced age). Pareus nevertheless affirmed an orthodox Calvinism against “Arminianism” (which I address at length in Chapter 4), accusing the Remonstrants of introducing “dangerous tragic terms” [cothurnis periculosis] into theology, subtle and equivocal phrases that obscured the truth and foreclosed opportunities for unity among the Reformed.16 Renowned for his “tough-minded pragmatism” and his interest in reconciling diverse Protestant congregations—the theme of his 1614 Irenicum, published under tense circumstances in the years before the Thirty Years War—many contemporaries even considered Pareus an irenicist.17 It is perhaps ironic that most modern readers recognize Pareus, by way of Milton, for his interest in classical notions of tragedy and his willingness to use 13  As is the case with many of the Reformers in this book, modern accounts of Pareus’ life and work are scarce. The most thorough account of Pareus’ life available in English probably remains the entry in Bayle’s Dictionary, translated in 1710. See Bayle [1710], 2454–9. Bayle seems to draw primarily from the documentary biography appended to Volume I of Pareus’ posthumous Opera Theologica (1647), written and compiled by his son Phillip Pareus. See Phillip Pareus, “Narratio Historica de Vita et Obitu Reverendissimi Patris  D.  Dadivis Perei Theologi Archi-Palatini celeberrimi,” in Pareus [1652], a4r–D2r. On Pareus’ comportment to millenarianism and his English readers see Revard [2003], 42–8. 14  Pak [2010], 103–24. On Hunnius’ own dramatic career, particularly his 1597 comedy Iosephus, and the world of dramata sacra in Reformation Strasbourg see Valentin [2015], 87–9, 110–12. 15  Patterson [1997], 192. Pareus’ commentary was condemned at Cambridge University in 1619 and at Oxford University in 1622; David Owen also published his Anti-Paraeus in 1622, in which he lumped Pareus together with other “antimonarchas,” including the Jesuits. See Decretum Universitatis Oxoniensis Damnans Propositiones Neotericorum Infra-Scriptas . . . [1622]; and Owen [1622]. 16  See, for instance, Pareus’ treatment of the Remonstrant cothurni in the First Article. Pareus [1651], 210–20. 17  Hotson compellingly argues that Pareus is less irenical than he is pragmatic, despite his reputation. Hotson [1995], 453.

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antique tragedy to elucidate the Scripture. Pareus’ public disagreement with the Leiden humanist Joseph Scaliger suggests another comportment to classical learning altogether. In a 1606 oration on chronology, Pareus criticized Scaliger’s efforts to employ classical texts to understand biblical history, and to harmonize diverse accounts, sacred and secular, in order to establish an accurate chronology.18 He alleged that Scaliger’s heathen sources, inconsistent and dubious, only afforded him a profanus calculus unsuited to sacred matters, introducing unnecessary hazards and absurdities into Scriptural chronology.19 Scaliger—who, it should be said, was also working in a Reformed tradition—defended his project in a 1607 response, accusing Pareus of unreasonably rejecting valuable intellectual resources and, in the process, arrogating undue authority to himself; in his correspondence with fellow travelers Isaac Casaubon and Seth Calvisius, Scaliger mocked Pareus as an incompetent scholar, an inept theologian (literally, a Theologaster), and a pretentious “prophet” policing Reformed exegesis in the name of ignorance.20 While Pareus sought reconciliation with Scaliger in 1608, asking the Dutch Calvinist Francis Gomarus to apologize on his behalf, he does not seem to have recanted his view on heathen sources.21 This conviction, that classical forms and authorities are unsuited to Christian exegesis, informs Pareus’ commentary on Revelation, even as he insists that the prophetic visions in the work “clearly have a dramatic form” [planè Dramaticam formam habent], that the Revelation “may truly be called a prophetic drama” [verè Drama Propheticum appellari possit].22 As he develops this idiosyncratic claim, Pareus makes no direct reference to classical works, eschewing comparison with Euripides, Sophocles, Seneca, Terence, or Plautus. Nor does he draw explicitly from any poetics, Aristotelian or otherwise, to make his case. Instead, Pareus takes Origen’s commentary on the Song of Songs as a point of departure. It is thus Origen that affords Pareus precedent as well as a model of drama—Origen, who identified the Song of Songs as an epithalamium “in modum dramatis,” defining drama itself as a “song of many characters” [multarum personarum cantilena], retaining the theatrical origins of the term “persona,” his chief example being “the enaction of a story [agi fabula solet] on the stage, where different characters are introduced and the whole structure of the narrative consists in their comings and goings among themselves.”23 Drawing upon Origen, Pareus insists that John received his revelation from the Lord by way of the angel “in morem Dramatis” and 18  See Grafton [1993], 611–13; [1995], 155–60. 19  Pareus [1606], B4r–C2v. 20  Scaliger [1607], 32–3; “Scaliger (Leiden) to Isaac Casaubon (Paris) [July 14, 1606]” in The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger VI [2012], 477–8; “Scaliger (Leiden) to Sethus Calvisius (Leipzig) [December 23, 1606]” in The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger VI [2012], 643–4; “Isaac Casaubon (Paris) to Scaliger (Leiden) [May 5, 1607]” in The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger VII [2012], 146–7. 21  For much more on Gomarus see Chapter 4. “Scaliger (Leiden) to Isaac Casaubon (Paris) [June 9, 1608]” in The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger VII [2012], 540–2. 22  P1622, 20; P1644, 24. 23  Origen [1957], 21–2 [I alter the translation slightly]; [1557], 553–4 [Prologus]; and P1622, 20. A truncated version of Origen’s argument appears, unattributed, in the Junius-Tremellius Latin Bible. See Testamenti Veteris Biblia Sacra . . . [1596], 172r.



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that the Book of Revelation preserves the form of this “Drama coeleste,” enacted by diverse characters and figures “in the heavenly theater” [in coelesti theatro].24 John is not the dramatist here. The Revelation itself is dramatic, inspiring John and his readers to examine these matters “with constant prayers, meditations, and attention.”25 When Milton emphasized Pareus’ comments on tragedy, he associated this notion of tragedy with Euripides and Aristotle. To the letter, however, Pareus never references classical poetry or poetics directly. When Pareus does employ technical terms, descriptions of plot derived from Aelius Donatus’ commentaries on Terence as well as tangential claims about tragedy gleaned from period poetics, he does not cite these sources. Instead Pareus suggests that Revelation itself offers a sufficient poetics, and he extrapolates a formal approach to drama from Scripture, with assistance from Origen, without taking immediate recourse to profane sources. Here Pareus is just as reticent to employ heathen knowledge to explicate sacred matters as he was in the earlier debates with Scaliger. Perhaps the embarrassing confrontation with Scaliger dissuaded him from wading into the waters of classical scholarship. Or perhaps he feared that such annotation would detract from the scopus of the commentary. In any case, when Pareus introduces poetic terms and notions that are foreign to the Book of Revelation, he eschews attribution and classical precedent. Instead, he foregrounds a sacred poetics with origins in Scripture itself. Given his critical allergies to classical and period poetics, Pareus does not demonstrate any need to distinguish between comedy and tragedy, or to define tragedy in any rarefied sense. Actually, he often conflates “drama” and “tragedy” in his critical preface, as if these terms were interchangeable.26 Donatus’ division of drama into four parts (prologus, protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe), although based on his analyses of Terence’s work, was applicable to tragedy as well as comedy; this structural language, particular to plot, was most salient to Pareus, and it is unsurprising that he sees little need to distinguish between “drama” and “tragedy.” The divisions with which he was preoccupied pertain to both. While Origen afforded Pareus a working definition of drama at large, tragedy emerges as a distinct category in the commentary when he identifies the “tragedy” of Antichrist as a prominent aspect of Revelation. We learn that Revelation unfolds as “a human tragedy” in which “characters appear one after another in diverse scenes in the theater, to represent things done before departing.”27 Moreover, Revelation is punctuated by choruses, just as “diverse choruses of musicians or cithara players separate discrete acts” in human tragedies; the function of the chorus, he asserts, is to “mitigate the aversion of spectators with sweet concord of music, and keep weary people in attention.”28 24  P1622, 24–5; P1644, 20. 25  P1622, 24–5; P1644, 20. 26  Lewalski noticed this in her attempt to extract a poetics from Pareus’ Commentary: Lewalski [1970], 1051. To make matters more complicated, sometimes the work is described as a “prophetic drama” while elsewhere he calls Revelation a “dramatic” or a “tragic” prophecy: P1622, 20, 31; P1644, 24, 26. 27  P1622, 20: “Sicut enim in Tragoedia humana, ad res gestas repraesentandas ex diversis scenis personae aliae pose alias in theatrum prodeunt, rursusque abscedunt”; P1644, 24–5. 28  Pareus avoids classical poetics altogether when he attends to the dramatic choruses in Revelation or the antique connections between tragedy and cithara music, illustrating instead how these elements are native to the text itself: the κιθάρα (Rev. 5:8, 14:2) or κιθαρῳδός (Rev. 14:2, 18:22), which Beza

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And when he turns to what he calls “the tragedy of Antichrist,” Pareus’ description is familiar. It is “truly tragic” insofar as “it represents the tragic emotions [motus] and tumults of the enemies against the Church of Christ, and proceeds finally to these enemies’ tragic end”—invoking broad notions of tragedy as a representation of violent and doleful passions, calamitous circumstances, and turbulent events that end in misery.29 This is what Pareus means where he points to Antichrist’s “tragic destruction” [interitum tragicum], where he describes God’s judgment of Babylon in Revelation 17 as “tragic,” or where John is exhorted “to write these tragic revelations [tragica φαινόμενα] to the terror of Babylon and comfort of the pious.”30 Glossing Revelation 18:2 in particular, Pareus insists that God’s judgment of Babylon “is solemnly published from heaven by the Angel and tragically figured” [coelitus ab Angelo solemniter promulgatur, & tragice figuratur].31 Ultimately, Pareus’ assumptions about tragedy are most apparent when he asserts that “Tragedians [Tragoedi] tend to mix things sportive [ludicra] and incidental to the work [πάρεργα τοῖς ἔργοις] with things grave [seriis], for both preparation and delight,” a description that seems more appropriate to tragicomedy than to tragedy.32 This helps explain why he wavers between calling Revelation a drama and a tragedy; after all, as Marvin T. Herrick demonstrates, there are few Renaissance poetics that define the slippery tragicomoedia or other mixed forms in any detail, and Pareus is at least as precise as Antonio Minturno or Julius Caesar Scaliger (to say nothing of Aristotle) in his treatment of the subject.33 As Tanya Pollard adroitly argues, moreover, tragicomedies must be understood as dynamic engagements with classical forms and precepts—not, as is often assumed, as “mongrel” plays or failed experiments.34 It is more useful to consider Pareus’ descriptions of drama and tragedy as experimental than ignorant or inconsistent. He seems to struggle to find existing terms that adequately describe the dramatic form of Revelation. In other words, Pareus does not turn to any particular definition of tragedy because there is no extant definition that is entirely appropriate to Revelation. Instead, he invokes a version of tragedy that accounts for Christ’s triumph and Antichrist’s ruin, for the salvation of the elect and the damnation of the reprobate. Revelation is no less “tragic” for its felicitous finale, in which the pious rejoice “in the adversaries’ end, which will be tragic and deadly” [ab hostium exitu, quod sit futurus tragicus atque funestus], and “finally in the far happier ending of their own

renders as cithara and citharoeda in the Junius-Tremellius version, as well as the angels who sing in unison throughout the body of the work. P1622, 20: “varii item musicorum vel citharoedorum chori, actus alios atque alios distinguunt, & quiescentibus personis suavi modulorum concentu fastidium spectatoribus mulcent, attentionemque sustinent”; P1644, 24–5. 29  P1622, 31: “Tragicos enim motus hostium atq[ue] tumultus adversus Ecclesiam Christi repraesentat, quos & tragicus eorundem exitus tandem excipit”; P1644, 26. 30  P1622, 180, 747, 862, 865–6; P1644, 85, 354, 404, 406. 31  P1622, 955–6; P1644, 451. 32  P1622, 31: “Iam Tragoedi quaedam πάρεργα τοῖς ἔργοις, ludicra seriis, tum praeparationis, tum delectationis causa admiscere . . . solent”; P1644, 26. 33  Herrick [1962], 1–15; Dewar-Watson [2007], 15–27. 34  Pollard [2015], 419–32; and Sidney [1973], 114.



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struggles” [a laetiore denique certaminum catastrophe].35 As Revelation comes to what Pareus describes as its “tragic catastrophe” [tragica catastrophe], and the “acts of the tragedy of the kings of the earth and Antichrist” [tragoediae a tyrannis & Antichristo . . . actitatae] conclude, the pious also look forward to the “happier comic future of the Church” [Ecclesiae vero laetior & comica futura].36 T R A G I C S T RU C T U R E A N D R E C O G N I T I O N I N   PA M M AC H I U S A N D T H E T R AG E D I A Pareus gleaned ideas about tragedy and Revelation from works like Thomas Naogeorgus’ “new tragedy” [tragoedia nova] Pammachius and John Foxe’s “apocalyptic comedy” [comoedia apocalyptica] Christus Triumphans, experimental dramata sacra that adapted antique and medieval dramatic resources to depict and interpret Scripture. These tragic meditations are of particular interest, not only as formal models but also as significant interpretations of Revelation in their own right, belonging to a period when, by Pareus’ own admission, “many theologians of greater renown in our age” [complures seculi nostri majoris notae Theologos] did not offer sustained commentary on Revelation.37 Thus Protestant poets dramatized the events and concepts in the Apocalypse, experimenting with mixed forms of tragedy under various names (tragicomedy, tragoedia nova, and comoedia nova, among others), recruiting classical tools and idioms to stage complex Scriptural episodes and to explore their diverse effects on audiences.38 While Naogeorgus, Negri, and Foxe belong to an earlier generation of Reformers, their work remained signal in the 1570s and 1580s, as Pareus began studying and teaching Revelation.39 Although they figure prominently in regional surveys of Protestant poetry as well as studies of Neo-Latin drama, Naogeorgus’ Pammachius, Negri’s Tragedia, and Foxe’s Christus Triumphans are seldom read together, and rarely in detail, as meditations on Revelation and form. These authors and their works thus warrant introduction. The poet and preacher Thomas Kirchmeyer, more familiar to readers throughout early modern Europe as Naogeorgus, was born in Straubing in Lower 35  P1622, 177–80, 747, 862, 865–6; P1644, 84, 85, 354, 404, 406. 36  P1622, 286: “Haec erit tragoediae a tyrannis & Antichristo hactenus actitatae tragica catastrophe: Ecclesiae vero laetior & comica futura, ut sequitur”; P1644, 134. In the 1618 text, this reads: “Haec igitur erit tragoediae a tyrannis & Antichristo hactenus actae funesta catastrophe: Sed laetior eadem & cronica futura Ecclessiae, ut sequitur.” Pareus [1618], 286. 37  He names Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Beza, Martin Bucer, and Peter Martyr Vermigli in particular. P1622, 16; P1644, 11. Pareus essentially confirms Irena Backus’ theses concerning early Protestant interpretations of Revelation. See Backus [2000], 3–36. 38  Herrick [1962], 1–62. 39  Naogeorgus died in 1563, but his work and legacy remained influential for several decades. A biographical sketch of Naogeorgus testifies to this; written by Conrad Gessner, the biography appears in Heinrich Pantaleon’s Prosopographiae, an important historical resource for mid-century Reformers across Europe. The same can be said of Negri’s Tragedia, which was translated into Latin in 1559 and into English in the 1570s. A French translation of Christus Triumphans, moreover, was printed in Geneva in 1562; Jacques Bienvenu adapted the work for the lively theatrical scene in Calvin’s Geneva, catering to academic audiences. Pantaleon [1566], 332; Foxe [1562]; and Beam [2015], 67–9.

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Bavaria in 1508.40 No first- or second-generation Reformer—save, perhaps, for Melanchthon—matched his knowledge of antique tragedy.41 Working consciously in the tradition of Erasmus’ Latin Euripides, Naogeorgus translated all of Sophocles’ tragedies into Latin verse; his versions of Ajax and Philoctetes first appeared in 1552, and his complete and annotated Sophoclis Tragoediae Septem was published by Joannes Oporinus in Basel in 1558.42 What truly set Naogeorgus apart from his evangelical contemporaries, however, was his readiness to adapt and mobilize classical forms against the papacy, to mine the works of Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Donatus, and even Aristotle’s Poetics for effective elements of tragedy “suited to our age” [nostro accommodata tempori].43 As he mocks inept tragedians who slavishly adhere to antique idioms, Naogeorgus recognizes “the merits of the ideas and characteristic gravity of the diction” in tragedy, elements which he readily appropriates to pious ends.44 He develops a tragic theology by modifying antique forms and methods as well as resources culled from more recent dramata sacra, pioneering an influential version of Reformation tragedy in his works Mercator seu Iudicium (1540), a distinctly Protestant Everyman where the titular merchant is taught justification by faith; Incendia seu Pyrgopolinices (1541), a depiction of the Catholic Duke Heinrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel’s acts of torture and arson against German Protestants; and the biblical tragedies Hamanus (1543), Hieremias (1543), and Iudas Iscariotes (1552).45 His controversial works were notorious enough to earn him a place on the Catholic Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559.46 It was in his popular and influential Pammachius, however, that Naogeorgus first offered audiences an engaging interpretation of Revelation as well as an innovative and enduring model of tragedy. 40  Sieveke [1993], 477–93; and van Abbé [1961], 95–100. 41  Like many of the early “Reformers,” it is quite difficult to locate Naogeorgus in familiar confessional terms. Naogeorgus served as a pastor in Lutheran parishes between 1536 and 1546, but both Luther and Melanchthon disputed his sole textual commentary, the In primam D. Ioannis Epistolam Annotationes (1544), because of his controversial theses on predestination and the sacraments, which suggested that he was more sympathetic to Zwingli and actually ranked among the Reformed. Authorities at Wittenberg forced his resignation in 1546, after which he studied at Basel and served as pastor in a Reformed parish in the Palatinate until his death in 1563. See Naogeorgus [1544]; Sieveke [1993], 478–9; van Abbé [1961], 95; Close [2009], 242–6. 42  Naogeorgus [1987], 272; and Sophocles [1558]. 43  Naogeorgus [1983], 296–8; and Toepfer [2011], 449–86. 44  Naogeorgus [1987], 272: “prodeant spirantes ampullas, et proiicientes sesquipedalia verba, qui veteris cothurni exempla praescribant, quales ego hoc seculo nondum legi neque audivi”; Naogeorgus, “Hamanus,” 298: “sententiarum lumina,/ Atque gravitatem dictionis propriam,/ Insipidius quidnam nec esse insulsius/ Nec tempori huic minus fatebere idoneum.” Naogeorgus’ prefatory comments might help us reframe Martin Mueller’s judgment in “Scriptural Tragedy à l’Antique,” that “the architectural principles of Sophoclean tragedy . . . [were] completely lost on Kirchmeyer.” I follow Mueller where he notes that Naogeorgus’ Sophocles is “a faithful, lucid, and eloquent verse translation,” and where he suggests that Naogeorgus’ biblical plays depart from this model, but I underline how this is a deliberate and creative decision that enables him to stage and interpret Scripture for diverse audiences with no real investment in Neo-Classical aesthetics. See Mueller [1980], 154. 45 Dietl [2013], 150–4. In addition to Naogeorgus’ Pyrgopolinices, Heinrich of BraunschweigWolfenbüttel is the subject of Luther’s own Wider Hans Worst (1541); both were printed in Wittenberg in 1541, and should be read together. See Edwards [1983], 143–62. 46 See Index Auctorum et librorum prohibitorum . . . [1559], Hiiiv. The Index also prohibits his edition of Sophocles, as Naogeorgus is listed among the “Authors whose books and writings are all prohibited” [Auctores quorum libri & scripta omnia prohibentur].



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Naogeorgus clearly imagined his tragedies as substantive theological works. “If the duty of theology is to teach piety and true worship of God,” he claims, “and to surrender good works and a pleasing life to God, and also directly to restrain impiety, false worship, and depraved life, all of these things also belong to tragedies, and are, in a certain manner of speaking, more efficaciously taught there.”47 Such is the purchase of tragedy, which is evident in Pammachius. Initially printed in Wittenberg in 1538, Naogeorgus addressed Pammachius to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, as well as to Martin Luther.48 The Apocalyptic frame is subtle but unequivocal. At the outset of Act I, Christ announces to the Apostles Peter and Paul that “at last you will have a great opponent whom it will not be possible for anyone, unless he be endowed with divine virtue, to recognize, to guard against, to resist—an opponent whom the hand of God shall preserve.”49 This is the Bishop Pammachius, the Antichrist, the eponymous “Warmonger,” the figure who, with the help of his advisor Porphyrius, is crowned Pope and subsequently corrupts the visible Church and brings the Holy Roman Empire under heel, the figure who “will bring on the total destruction [πανολεθρία] of right and faith.”50 In the prologue, we learn that Christ sets the tragedy to work when he “orders Satan, who has been imprisoned for a thousand years, to be freed”—a reference to Revelation 20:7 that Naogeorgus dramatizes at the beginning of Act I, as Christ directs an angel to “take the keys of hell and quickly free [solvas] our old enemy.”51 The “binding” [ἡ δέσις] and “loosing” [ἡ λύσις] of the plot, in the Aristotelian sense of plot development, literally corresponds with Satan’s own binding and loosing in Pammachius, his imprisonment and release outlined in Revelation. When Satan is released, Christ also directs Truth [Veritas] and Free Speech [Parrhesia] into exile; only then can Satan claim that “in my kingdom there is the greatest liberty, and it is the extreme sin to speak the truth” [libertas apud me maxima est./ Et uerum dicere extremum est piaculum].52 Following Satan, with his “tragic expression” [Vultu tragico], Pammachius corrupts the Church, cultivating depravity and framing his own endeavors in tragic terms: “O powerful fortune, bring this tragedy to pass” [O fortuna potens hanc effice tragoediam].53 Thus the tragedy in Pammachius is the unbridled exploitation of the visible Church by the papal Antichrist prophesied in Revelation. Naogeorgus knowingly modifies the scope of ancient tragedy in order to depict the long processes foretold in the Apocalypse, from antiquity to the ­present. While “the ancients, who wrote tragedies, dealt with arguments well over long before their time, and none of them dared to put on present events [res praesentes],” 47  Naogeorgus [1987], 272: “Si Theologiae officium est docere pietatem verumque Dei cultum, et vitam Deo placentem bonaque opera tradere, atque e regione reprehendere impietatem, falsosque cultus vitamque pravam, haec omnia quoque nostris insunt Tragoediis, et efficacius quodammodo docentur.” 48  Pammachius appeared in multiple Latin editions, and was included in Nicholas Brylinger’s 1541 collection of Comoediae ac Tragoediae aliquot ex Novo et Vetere Testamento desumptae; it also appeared in German and Czech translations. 49  Love, 76, 77; and Pamm., 24–32. 50  Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly translates “Pammachius” as “Warmonger” in her excellent article on Naogeorgus. See Watanabe-O’Kelly [2015], 317–31; Love, 81; and Pamm., 46. 51  Love, 75, 82; and Pamm., 22, 50. 52  Love, 113; and Pamm., 180. 53  Love, 110, 118; and Pamm., 168, 204.

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Naogeorgus employs tragedy to illustrate, in vivid detail, how the events of the  sixteenth century do indeed look forward to the Last Judgment and the New Jerusalem.54 Pammachius collapses a thousand years of ecclesiastical history into four acts, as Naogeorgus dramatizes the gradual corruption of Christian Europe by the papacy over a series of episodes involving figures low and high, comic and tragic, from the Terentian slave Dromo to Satan himself. The play begins with Antichrist’s emergence, as Naogeorgus dramatizes the simultaneous corruption of the papacy and the empire. Recalling Lorenzo Valla’s textual scholarship, Naogeorgus stages the “legitimation” of the forged Donation of Constantine, through which the papacy wrests control of the secular world from the Emperor Julian the Apostate. Readers follow as the curate Porphyrius subsequently distorts the laws and customs of the Church, complete with marginal annotations connecting the events in the play to existing documents and decrees. The Papacy and rites of the Roman Church are revealed as irredeemable, their strategies sinister, and their sacraments fraudulent and opportunistic. According to Porphyrius, “Nothing troublesome ever emerges, which the mass cannot remove” [non missa queat tollere] and, of auricular confession, “If money is given, the wicked man is soon absolved of his guilt.”55 Pammachius spans the duration of the Middle Ages, until Satan’s power and the Papacy are checked by Christ: I shall also see to it that they do not proceed further than it has been decreed [constitutum est] and that evil shall not prevail forever, on account of my followers, any of whom is dearer to me than all the Pammachiuses and than all the tribes of Satan. Fear not, that the wicked shall destroy the just or remove them from my grace.56

Hence, after the gratuitous climax of the tragedy, as Satan and his demons feast on the corpses of misguided medieval Catholics, they are roused from lazy slumber by an announcement concerning the English and German Reformations. Satan is informed that “not only the Saxons, but also almost all the Germans are casting off your yoke,” men that “teach that the mass is not needed because by his exertions Christ wins for the living and the dead forgiveness of sins and that another form of worship is not rightly withdrawn from the people.”57 Christ even arrives late in Act IV, testifying in an Apocalyptic idiom that “There are scarcely seven thousand people left in the world who have not accepted the brand of the Roman beast”—a direct reference to Revelation 13—and “who do not believe the lies and who have not yielded at the first rage of Satan.”58 The tragedy ends in IV.v, with Satan’s threat: “That man, the leader of the enemy, will now meet me and I will sate myself to nausea with his blood.”59 These are the last lines in the drama, referring to a prominent yet unnamed Reformer, followed only by an epilogue: Do not expect now, good spectators, that a fifth act is to be added to this play. Christ will act that one day at his own time [Suo quem Christus olim est acturus die]. Meanwhile the plots of the fourth act move our affairs to and fro [Actus quarti consilia res movent/ Rursum 54  Love, 74; and Pamm., 18. 56  Love, 161; and Pamm., 412. 58  Love, 159; and Pamm., 400.

55  Love, 136, 138; and Pamm., 290, 298. 57  Love, 164, 165; and Pamm., 428, 434. 59  Love, 169; and Pamm., 450.



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prorsum] as is well seen at the present time. The whole business of Satan is now making a loud noise. The Papacy is defended and so is the worship of what is wicked. There is strenuous opposition to the glory of Christ . . . The Turks rage fiercely against us; we rage no less strongly against our own selves, so that it is troublesome for Christians to live and see perpetually the tragedies of Satan [Spectare iugiter satanae tragoedias]. Now must we hope that in human affairs things will be better, unless God shall put an end to that tragedy by the arrival of his son who shall carry off from the world his own, as gold out of dung, and shall hand over the wicked to the everlasting fires, this will be the denouement of this play [fabulae totius erit καταστροφή].60

With this, Naogeorgus dissolves the barriers between the tragedy, the audience, and the Revelation. Readers and spectators are actors in the drama of history revealed to John and recorded in Scripture, in which the pending καταστροφή or catastrophe, as in Pammachius, is Christ’s return, the imminent Second Coming. Where the plot of the tragedy remains incomplete, Naogeorgus challenges audiences to reconsider their actions, expectations, hopes, and fears, and to consider how the structural demand for a resolution must involve faith in Christ—an inventive formal strategy that Nicholas Barthélemy de Loches attempted in his earlier sacred drama, Christus Xilonicus.61 The “tragedy” in Pammachius is literally Satan’s impact on human events, and Naogeorgus illustrates that this tragedy cannot be resolved by human means alone. Pammachius, rather, requires Christ’s intervention, as prophesied in Revelation. The human affairs of the play are brought firmly into a divine economy or constitution of events, to be completed and made perfect in the coming catastrophe. Tragedy, more philosophical than history, helps explain the causal connections between events as well as account for history by way of divine providence. The project of Pammachius is not merely to render history intelligible as Christ’s design but also to frame the role of human action in this history. At the end of the play, ours is only a “hope that in human affairs things will be better.” From a divine perspective, God’s plot is complete; Naogeorgus dramatizes the human perspective in his incomplete tragedy, in which our task is to wait and hope. Pammachius was evidently popular and stirring. As Paul Whitfield White recounts in detail, a 1545 performance at Christ’s College, Cambridge even erupted into a minor riot.62 At least, this was Bishop Stephen Gardiner’s account of the event; writing as Chancellor of Cambridge University, Gardiner protested to the Vice-Chancellor Matthew Parker that “parte of which tragedie is soo pestiferous as wer intollerable” and that the student audience, “after they deservedly hissed the bishop of Rome from the stage . . . forced off all the doctors with the same authority by jeering.”63 Whether or not Gardiner’s account is reliable, Pammachius is indeed a potent piece of antipapal drama, exploiting spectacle as well as key aspects of dramatic structure, withholding Act V and the catastrophe, illustrating the extent to which its audiences are called to participate in the catastrophe of ecclesiastical history as well as the prophecies of the Revelation. In this Naogeorgus also dramatizes 60  Love, 169; and Pamm., 452–4. 61  Cora Dietl also identifies Jacob Locher’s Tragedia de Thurcis et Suldano (1497) as a relevant source. Dietl [2013], 117–23, 151. 62  White [2007], 261–90. 63  Love, 170, 178–9.

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a crucial problem for interpreters of the Apocalypse—namely, how to distinguish what is past, in Revelation, from what is to come, how to parse the imaginative and enigmatic account of past events from the prophetic visions that look forward. Naogeorgus, moreover, foregrounds the importance of recognition in both tragedy and Revelation, as audiences struggle to orient themselves in history and Scripture. Recognition is also crucial to Francesco Negri in the Tragedia intitolata Libero Arbitrio [Tragedy of Free Will], originally printed in Basel in Italian in 1546. While Negri initially follows Naogeorgus, framing Revelation as a tragedy, he also complicates Naogeorgus’ struggle against Antichrist, dramatizing Antichrist’s systematic deceptions as well as his ability to elude recognition. In this sense Negri helps audiences to identify the beast that receives its power from the dragon Satan in Revelation 13, offering an exhaustive allegorical depiction of medieval Catholicism while simultaneously unveiling and undermining its claims to piety and authority. Negri marshals the resources of tragedy to exegetical ends, dramatizing crucial problems of interpretation while simultaneously presenting Revelation as an urgent, edifying, and spectacular text. A former Benedictine who abandoned the order in 1525, Negri composed the Tragedia during his tenure as a professor of Latin and Greek at Chiavenna, where he also maintained important ties with Swiss Reformers such as Bullinger, Bucer, and Wolfgang Capito.64 In the popular Tragedia, the depraved King Freewill, the bastard child of scholastic abstraction, rules over the Kingdom of Good Works, a scathing representation of medieval Christendom. Perverted by the papacy, this kingdom is divided into eight provinces—Monks, Worship of the Saints, Religious Houses, Penance, Fasting, Prayer, Alms, and the Mass—each of which is further divided into cities with distinct governors in an elaborate geographical taxonomy of sins and abuses.65 The crisis in the Tragedia is apparent once Freewill learns of recent events throughout Germany and Italy—namely, the early Reformation—and their pending effect on his kingdom.66 The King, together with Clergy, introduces radical new measures to deal with these rebels, appointing inquisitors to censor the Reformers “to these two endes, that is, to the defence of the Popishe monarchie, with the kyngdome of good works, and to the overthrowe of al those which do rebel agaynst these two states.”67 Negri balances his extensive description of the realm and its corrupt stewards with a simultaneous exploration of true and pious doctrine. Pillorying theologies of “Free Will” and “Good Works,” Negri demonstrates instead how notions of justification by faith and the bondage of the will, inflected by Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, and their contemporaries, are integral to the reformation of the polity as well as the Church. In Act II, for instance, Bertuccius the Barber, cousin of the renowned Pasquino, the voice of Italian satire, offers a comic commentary on the otherwise tragic litany of papal inventions and 64  Church [1974], 84–5; and Caponetto [1999], 18–38. 65  Negri’s particular presentation is similar to Hiob Gast’s Expostulatio Iustitiae cum Mundo, à Belial Instigatio (1525), a work “wherein the present tragedy of the common people and the princes is in some measure addressed” [In qua praesens haec vulgi & principum tragoedia nonnihil attingitur]—that is to say, the “tragedy” of the Peasants’ Revolt. See Freewyl, 37–8; and Gast [1525], 20v–24r. 66  Freewyl, 35. 67  Freewyl, 82, 85.



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exploitations.68 In Act III, moreover, members of Clergy’s household share stories of a learned lawyer who condemns king and pope alike for unlawful encroachments and baseless claims to authority. Here, as in Pammachius, Negri provides marginal annotations to relevant documents and sources.69 Negri turns explicitly to Revelation in Acts IV and V. In Act IV Paul and Peter arrive in Renaissance Rome to bear witness to the corruption of Christendom, directly recalling the arrival of the two witnesses depicted in Revelation 11. Alienated from the papacy, Peter and Paul describe current events as a tragedy that unfolds, by God’s permission, on the earthly stage. Freewill, we learn, rules only “in the same case that kings stand in tragedies rehearsed upon a stage”; indeed, “this world is a stage” on which the devil and his servants “dresse these players, and doe send them foorth to represent the actes and scenes of this fable, in suche sort as they wyl have them to be playde.”70 Freewill arrogates undue force and authority to himself and to human agency in general, underscoring the complex meaning of action and acting throughout the Tragedia. And while the reprobate may be entertained by “this kynde of trashe,” placing undue faith in human works and human will, current events indicate that God intends to deliver the elect from this tragedy.71 The vicissitudes of Scriptural history become more apparent at the outset of Act V, as we learn that Justifying Grace has executed King Freewill. Insofar as audiences do not see this act of violence directly, Negri observes tragic decorum. But it is a pivotal moment: the apostles Peter and Paul, together with the angel Raphael, immediately announce the ascendancy of Antichrist. Collating the languages of I John 2:22 and Revelation 13, Negri’s Raphael identifies the Pope as Antichrist, the beast which resembles a lamb but speaks like a dragon “who at this tyme is of greater power in the worlde then ever he was,” even as he affirms that: this name antechriste, or Pope . . . is not [the] name of any one particular person, but it is a common name to divers in succession, which have sitten in one throne, bearing this name one after another, & do possess one seignorie, whereof, albeit the lawes, the government, and thoperations do appeare religious in shew to [the] world, yet not withstanding, they are as wicked and villainous, as they are altogether contrary to Jesus Christ both in word & deede.72

Negri dedicates all of Act V to this end, unmasking Antichrist and demystifying the papacy. As in Pammachius, the tragic form is not incidental but rather absolutely central to Negri’s project. But while Pammachius is theatrical, emphasizing plot and structure in performance, the Tragedia is largely declamatory, foregrounding arguments that hinge on tragic recognition. Nevertheless, Negri’s debts to sixteenth-century dramata sacra are apparent as are his engagements, direct or indirect, with classical tragedy.73 The Tragedia draws upon Joannes Ravisius Textor’s Ecclesia, for instance, a Latin work well-suited to the needs of his students in Chiavenna. In Ecclesia the Church is subject to abuse by hypocrites and audiences are challenged to identify 68  Caponetto [1999], 34–7. On Pasquino see Barkan [1999], 213–31. 69  Freewyl, 88–122. 70  Freewyl, 131–2, 145. 71  Freewyl, 145, 168–9, 172. 72  Freewyl, 172. 73  Herrick [1965], 262.

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their enemies despite their powerful and effective theatrical deceptions.74 Negri raises the stakes in his Tragedia, as Paul and Peter (in place of Ravisius Textor’s nameless reforming bishops) illustrate how Antichrist’s is a mystifying theatrical power. The pious reader of Revelation itself must be able to recognize the tragedy of Antichrist as such. In this sense, Negri confirms John Parker’s astute observations in The Aesthetics of Antichrist—namely, that the struggle against Antichrist foregrounds the importance of playacting and mimesis in Christianity itself as pious audiences are understandably anxious to distinguish between Christian and Antichristian theatrical practices.75 Discerning among the elements of tragedy, in the Tragedia as well as Revelation, is tantamount to recognizing Antichrist.76 Negri’s Tragedia appealed to the educated elite and to professionals as well as to laborers and artisans; translated into French (1558), Latin (1559), and English (1577), the work made an international impact, circulating widely across borders and languages and striking a chord with readers in diverse Protestant enclaves.77 Sir Thomas Hoby, for instance, the English Protestant who translated Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, began translating Negri’s Tragedia in 1550, a few years after he studied classics and theology at Strasbourg with Bucer (who may have introduced him to the work).78 It also inspired similar works, such as Bernardino Ochino’s Tragoedie or Dialoge of the Unjuste Usurped Primacie of the Bishop of Rome, translated into English by John Ponet in 1549. Ochino wrote his episodic Tragoedie during his tenure in England where he sought refuge under Edward VI. Ochino follows Negri insofar as “this name of Antichrist is not the proper name of any one man, but is a common name to many,” the papacy at large; for Ochino, however, it is the seventh-century Pope Boniface III in particular who enlarges the powers of the Roman episcopacy by Antichristian invention and ambition, introducing new doctrines concerning infallibility, sacraments, and purgatory, extending the reach and scope of the papacy across Europe.79 Lucifer himself celebrates this as “the byrthe of Antichrist.”80 In Ochino’s account, moreover, English Reformers feature prominently in the catastrophe. Christ announces that Henry VIII will begin the work of Reformation and that Edward IV “shall pourge all hys kyngdomes, and dominions 74  Textor [1980], v–viii; [1536], 105v–121r; Vodoz [1898], 117–25; Pédeflous [2013], 19–40. 75  Parker [2007], x. 76  Here I might quibble with Salvatore Caponetto’s otherwise excellent treatment of Negri and the Tragedia in The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy, particularly where he claims that Negri’s tragedy “has nothing either theatrical or poetic about it.” Negri knowingly departs from spectacular presentations of Scripture that were common in the popular sacre rappresentazioni, but he does indeed adhere to poetic notions of decorum and structure, and to tragic form and style. More to the point, however, Negri asks audiences to discern among theatrical and poetic practices, to decide what is most appropriate to sacred matters and what techniques the popes have used to corrupt the Church and obscure the origins of their inventions. The Tragedia effectively demands an audience that is familiar with theater and poetics. Caponetto [1999], 34. 77  Freewyl, 49; Caponetto [1999], 35; Barbieri [1997], 691–709; and Sturiale [1997], 731–40. Carlo M. Bajetta argues compellingly for this publication date, for the English translation, in Bajetta [1997], 711–30. 78  In his diary, Hoby claims to have translated the work. Barbieri [1997], 697; Sturiale [1997], 732; and Kelly [2004]. 79  Ochino evidently composed the work in Italian, and John Ponet used a manuscript copy for his translation. Ochino [1549], Ciir, Eiiir, Uiiir–Uivv. 80  Ochino [1549], Siir.



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from all the supersticion and ydolatry of Antichrist.”81 Thomas Cranmer also speaks in the Tragoedie, collating Scriptural loci on Antichrist and delivering an authoritative interpretation of Revelation.82 Once again, tragedy is more than a vehicle to express its theological content. Human history is not merely a succession of events; it has a plot, a dramatic structure, which is unveiled in the Revelation. Insofar as both Negri and Ochino frame the events in Revelation as a tragedy, they duly underscore the importance of recognition. CHRISTUS TRIUMPHANS AND THE TRAGEDY OF ANTICHRIST John Foxe’s contribution to the history of Reformation tragedy, Christus Triumphans, is the most thorough and penetrating dramatic meditation on Revelation in the sixteenth century. Foxe called Christus Triumphans an “Apocalyptic Comedy” [Comoedia Apocalyptica], but it is certainly indebted to earlier Protestant experiments in tragedy, developing crucial aspects of Naogeorgus’ Pammachius, Negri’s Tragedia, and even Ochino’s Tragoedie. Foxe is, however, the first among them to locate the tragedy of Antichrist explicitly within a larger comic frame. Every episode in Christus Triumphans points to Christ’s imminent return, for which audiences should prepare “all the more quickly since it seems that all the parts of the plot [omnibus fabulae partibus] have been acted out and that the scene of this world is rushing to that final ‘Farewell, and applaud,’” invoking the “Valete et plaudite” with which Terence and his Renaissance imitators ended their comedies.83 But, following Pammachius, Christus Triumphans ends without a catastrophe. Foxe claims instead that “the catastrophe of everything [is] imminent”; now that the prophecies in Revelation are “completely fulfilled, nothing seems to remain except that apocalyptic voice soon to be heard from heaven, ‘It is finished,’” the voice in Revelation 21:6 which announces the Last Judgment and the real transition from the earthly to the heavenly Church.84 This is the comic catastrophe to come. In the meantime, however, we occupy Foxe’s “now” [nunc], as Satan “shakes up the world with unspeakable tragedies”; we observe those “wondrous” [miras] events which the devil “incites . . . through Pseudamnus, the Antichrist, enemy of the lamb and of Ecclesia.”85 These are the same tragedies that Foxe describes in great detail across successive editions of the Actes and Monuments: the “Tragicall and lamentable history” of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, for instance, the “Tragedy & spectacle of that bloudy Inquisition” in Spain, the examinations of Anne Askew and John Philpot, and the executions of Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, among so many other declaredly tragic events from which only God can deliver his elect.86 Before he narrated these “tragedies” at length, Foxe explored the meaning, form, and purchase of tragedy in Christus Triumphans. 81  Ochino [1549], Yir. 82  Ochino [1549], Ziv–Bbiiiv. See also MacCulloch [2002], 27–9. 83  CT, 206–7 [I alter the translation slightly here]. 84  CT, 206–7. 85  CT, 212–13, 232–3. 86  Foxe [1583], I:632, II:934, 1234, 1795–1831, 1717.

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As Foxe turned to Revelation to understand the persecution of his countrymen in Marian England, he oriented events and dates in ecclesiastical history primarily in relation to the Apocalypse. Initially printed by Oporinus in Basel in 1556, Christus Triumphans marks Foxe’s first sustained engagement with Revelation.87 As he readied his work for publication, he undoubtedly discussed the Apocalypse with his friend John Bale, with whom he lived in exile; he studied Bale’s pathbreaking commentary The Image of Both Churches (1547) and may have even known Bale’s English translation of Pammachius, a text which has not survived but which Bale himself numbers among his works in his Illustrium Maioris Britanniae Scriptorum Summarium (1548).88 Bale, moreover, introduced Foxe to Matthias Flacius Illyricus and the work of the Magdeburg Centuriators, all of whom shaped his protracted engagement with ecclesiastical history and Revelation. The Apocalypse served as a source and model for successive editions of his Actes and Monuments, from the Latin Commentarii Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum (1559) to the four English versions he ushered into print in his lifetime (in 1563, 1570, 1576, and 1583), each of which marshals apocalyptic evidence to situate past and present events in a plot that far exceeds human history and agency. Revelation afforded Foxe a powerful theological language and method, enabling him, as Andrew Escobedo elegantly asserts, “to interpret the seeming absence of the true church in history as a continuity rather than as an interruption, a sustained struggle between Antichrist and the faithful.”89 His final project, the thorough commentary Eicasmi seu Meditationes in Sacram Apocalypsin (1587), foregrounded the correspondences between Revelation and the Actes and Monuments—in this case, with direct reference to the text of Revelation itself, often employing numerology and chronology to map the ongoing persecution of the true Church. Most of Foxe’s works involved detailed exegesis of Revelation, as his meditations on the Apocalypse indelibly shaped his conception of ecclesiastical history. Again, Christus Triumphans was his first sustained engagement with the work. Foxe, like Pareus after him, came to Revelation by way of tragedy. Foxe is notably more direct in his engagement with Revelation than previous tragedians, as he sequences the events of the New Testament and ecclesiastical history at large according to the “plot” of the Apocalypse. As in Pammachius, the “binding” and “loosing” of the plot in Christus Triumphans corresponds directly to Satan’s captivity and subsequent release in Revelation. In Act I, Christ fulfills the law, through his death and resurrection. The Church is freed from sin and Satan, defeated, begins his thousand-year imprisonment described in Revelation 20. Across Acts II, III, and most of IV, Satan is held captive. In his stead, Pornapolis— that is, the Whore of Babylon—and Dioctetes persecute the Church from Rome. After Christ’s ascension, Ecclesia is left alone in history, “deserted, without all friends and acquaintances, poor and bereft, the scum of the earth, except that the bridegroom still remains for me”; it is only in Act III that Foxe, dramatizing the 87  Bauckham [1978], 75–83. 88  King [2006], 33–9; Bale [1548], 244r. 89  In general, Escobedo delivers a great account of Foxe’s ongoing project, underlining how the history of the true Church is not always consonant with English political or ecclesiastical history. Escobedo [2004], 86, 28–44, 81–112.



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Acts of the Apostles, illustrates how Peter and a converted Paul free the primitive Church from Roman subjugation, by Christ’s authority.90 As we move into Act IV, the persecutor Dioctetes is banished, Constantine befriends Ecclesia, and an era begins under which even Ecclesia confesses to enjoy peace (save for “the Turkish madness,” the emergence and ascendancy of Islam and its perceived threat to Christianity).91 In IV.iv, however, Satan is freed from his prison and promptly orders Pseudamnus, the Antichrist, to pretend piety in order to infiltrate the clergy and rise to unprecedented primacy as pope. As Satan directs the Antichrist to play the part of holiness, the persecutor Dioctetes returns, as does Pornapolis, who masquerades as the Church; Ecclesia, in turn, is slandered as an “Anabaptista,” a Wycliffite, and a Waldensian.92 At the climax of Act IV, after Satan has been released from prison, Foxe introduces a dramatic element that is missing in the previous tragedies—namely, a Chorus. This first Chorus, composed of Vatican administrators—priests, lawyers [decretistae and canonistae], philosophers and astrologers [cosmosophoi], monks and scribes, among others—acknowledge the Whore of Babylon as Ecclesia, demonstrating that the world at large has been deceived.93 Satan’s hold over Christendom is explicitly theatrical—a detail that Foxe draws directly from Negri’s Tragedia, where Peter and Paul arrive in Rome and reveal King Freewill as nothing more than an actor playing a part in the theater of God’s glory. But the Chorus that punctuates Act IV in Christus Triumphans expresses confidence in Antichrist’s performance. In response to Pseudamnus’ question “Is this our Ecclesia or not” [Haeccine nobis Ecclesia est an non], they respond succinctly, “It is” [Est].94 In Act V, Satan directs more of his agents to disguise themselves and pretend piety; indeed, Satan’s comic attendant Psychephonus plays the role of a Franciscan named Hypocrisis—that is, stageplaying or mimicry itself. When the preacher Hierologus finally speaks the truth, identifying Pseudamnus as the Antichrist and Pornapolis as “the Apocalyptic whore of Babylon,” he is treated as a heretic.95 But, remarkably, even Satan’s minions seem to recognize God’s plan in Revelation. Psychephonus admits that “there’s nothing left for me but to write an epitaph for Satan and his followers,” even as he resigns himself to his demonic station: “Each must play his part on the stage as the plot requires” [Quisque ut fert fabula, ita scenae inserviat].96 This is crucial to Foxe’s dramatic meditation on Revelation: whereas in Negri’s Tragedia the forces of evil seem oblivious to their limits, the diverse actors that populate the world of Christus Triumphans recognize their agency and its boundaries. And it is another satanic figure, the nuntius Anabasius, who expresses this most clearly to the Antichrist himself: the world, long blinded, is now beginning to see . . . Everywhere they’re being refined by letters and languages. Nothing is achieved by deception . . . They say your pomp, extravagance, lust, savagery, doctrine, poisonings, crimes, trickeries and trumperies, and the tumult of their tragic life easily prove who you are: they firmly believe that you are the Antichrist.97 90  CT, 274–5. 93  CT, 334–5. 95  CT, 342–3.

91  CT, 306–7. 92  CT, 330–3. 94  CT, 334–5 [I alter the translation slightly here]. 96  CT, 340–1. 97  CT, 350–1 [my emphasis].

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As the greater apocalyptic comedy takes shape, and the comic catastrophe is increasingly imminent, Foxe describes oppression and persecution under Antichrist as “tragic life,” the experience of which is enough to prove [arguere] that Pseudamnus is indeed the beast foretold in Revelation. Their tragic life is, to the letter, the proof that grounds their firm belief. Pseudamnus, in turn, does not immediately recognize himself as Antichrist and offers his own competing reading of Revelation, claiming that the “beast symbolizes the Mohammedan Turk”—a typical medieval Catholic interpretation.98 But Ecclesia is also familiar with Revelation. Once Pseudamnus is exposed as the Antichrist, she urges patience and prayer, reiterating Revelation 13:8–10: “If any are to go into captivity, into captivity they go. If any are to be killed by the sword, by the sword they will be killed. This calls for endurance and faith on the part of the saints,” acknowledging that the Antichrist cannot be overcome “Except by the coming of Christ.”99 Here, in the final scene of Christus Triumphans, the second Chorus emerges, a chorus of singers who are at once the bridesmaids announced at Revelation 19:7, attending Ecclesia and “keeping watch for [her] bridegroom [Christ] until he comes for the wedding,” as well as the heavenly chorus of virgins at Revelation 14:1–5.100 As Ecclesia leads the second chorus in prayer, Foxe revisits the last scene and absent catastrophe of Pammachius. Ecclesia beseeches Christ for “divine assistance, for human resources fail us completely . . . How long, oh Christ, will the world, long ago conquered by you, exalt itself in our suffering?”101 In response to the choral prayer, Foxe adds a stage direction: curtains open revealing the upper part of the theater where thrones are set, upon which sit the books of life and death, containing the names of the elect and reprobate, as depicted in Revelation 20:11–15. Robes are also lowered down, and as Ecclesia and the chorus prepare for the wedding, they rejoice in the text of the Book of Life, identical to the text of Revelation 21:2: “I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”102 Ecclesia and the chorus sing an epithalamion, and recognize God’s peripeteia, “the reversal of things, the overturning of the world as it was” [rerum versa mundique prioris], at which nature itself “stands stupefied,” “surrenders,” and “feels ashamed, wondering what this new day is which is coming.”103 But Foxe, following Naogeorgus, does not depict Christ’s return. The Chorus makes it clear that “Nothing remains except the bridegroom himself, who will bring the final catastrophe [Catastrophen] to our stage,” but they duly confess that “When that will happen none will say for sure. The poet has shown what he could.”104 In the Chorus Virginum Foxe foregrounds his human limitations. A poet may urge faithful spectators to prepare themselves, and may reiterate the promises of the Gospel, but he has nonetheless “shown what he could” [quod possit, praestitit].105 While Revelation looks forward to the New Jerusalem and the Last Judgment, 98  CT, 350–3. 99  CT, 358–9. 100  Foxe identifies only five members of the Chorus, instead of the 144,000 described in Revelation. CT, 358–61. 101  CT, 362–3. 102  CT, 364–5. 103  CT, 368–9. 104  CT, 370–1. 105  CT, 370–1.



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Foxe is understandably reluctant to depict these future events in any detail. Instead, the Chorus announces that “The time is perhaps [fortasse] not too long.”106 But this “fortasse” does not merely register the poet’s uncertainty. Foxe is limited in what he can depict, nor can he predict when Christ will return, but insofar as the adverb “fortasse” might also be translated as “probably,” the phrase is less a disclaimer than a statement, based on evidence. Based on tragic current events, Christ’s imminent return is probable. After all, the Chorus announces, “We see the marvelous preludes” to the coming catastrophe, as Satan and Antichrist wage fierce war against the faithful.107 In this case, the tragic circumstances make the tragic structure apparent. Pointing to the imminent catastrophe, Foxe is eager to affirm the truth of the prophecies in Revelation even as he recognizes how little he can say about future events. “THE TRAGIC FORM OF EACH VISION” Recalling Pammachius and Christus Triumphans, Pareus reproduces the language of the unfinished drama in his commentary on Revelation. Revelation itself, he claims, is a tragedy that lacks a catastrophe: All of Act IV with its completion remains concealed, because the seventh trumpet has not yet sounded nor has the seventh vial yet been poured out into the air. A great part of Act III is likewise reserved for the future, which in its time will see the full gathering of the kings of the earth at Harmagedon, the excoriating and burning of the whore, the desolation of Babylon, the outcome of the war of Gog, etc. We watched the beginning and continue to watch.108

Like the audiences of Pammachius and Christus Triumphans, Pareus and his contemporaries bear witness as the prophecies take shape and history moves toward its glorious conclusion. Pareus uses the term “act” [actus] in an idiosyncratic way here, as these “acts” correspond to the four-part structure of drama articulated by Donatus, not the familiar five-act structure of classical comedy and tragedy. He thus argues that the drama of Revelation will continue to increase in intensity as we occupy its epitasis (Pareus’ “third act”), looking forward to its catastrophe and completion (the “fourth act”). Preoccupied with the Reformation and its violent discontents, Pareus makes sure to distinguish the last acts of the drama of Revelation from the whole. He calls these last acts, from the epitasis to the promised catastrophe, the “Tragedy of Antichrist” [tragoediam Antichristi].109 In this sense as well, Pareus follows Foxe, delineating the tragic reign of Antichrist from the comic drama at large. To draw this distinction, however, Pareus parses Revelation in an admittedly 106  CT, 370–1. 107  CT, 370–1. 108  P1622, 33–4: “Integer Actus quartus latet cum suo complemento, quia septima tuba nondum clanxit, nec septima phiala in aërem effuse dum est. Etiam tertii Actus bona pars servatur posteritati, quae suo tempore plenam congregationem Regum terrae in Armageddon, & mulieris fornicariae exossationem atque exustionem, & Babylonis desolationem, & belli Gogici eventum &c. videbit. Initia nos vidimus, & videmus”; P1644, 28. 109  P1622, 30; P1644, 25.

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esoteric way. His method is complicated, and involves several stages of division; it is likely that this method proved difficult for many readers, which helps explain why his debts to Reformation tragedians have remained obscure and his significant exegetical contributions unacknowledged. Nevertheless, a careful a­ nalysis of his method helps illustrate how and why Pareus turned to drama, and to tragedy in particular. Initially, Pareus divides Revelation into three parts: a brief Proemium [Rev. 1:1–8], wherein John delivers the “title and dedication of the book”; the body, comprised of prophesies and visions; and an equally brief Epilogus [Rev. 22:6–21], wherein John “commends the utility of the prophecy and establishes its divine authority by anathema [anathemate].”110 He proceeds to divide the body of the work into seven distinct prophecies or visions [Prophetia seu visiones]: I [Rev. 1:9–3], II [Rev. 4–7], III [Rev. 8–11], IV [Rev. 12–14], V [Rev. 15–16], VI [Rev. 17–19], VII [Rev. 20–22:5]. In one sense, this scheme is traditional; the Venerable Bede divided Revelation into seven visions, and many medieval and early modern commentaries followed suit.111 But Pareus alters the termini of each vision and, more importantly, insists that each individual vision is structured as a tragedy. He even delivers a detailed dramatis personae, listing the actors, apparitions, and choruses, in order of appearance, that comprise each vision.112 Prophecy and drama are inextricable here. Pareus suggests that prophecy itself is a species of dramatic mimesis, as the prophetic visions “represent by means of a certain imitation” [similitudine quadam . . . repraesentant], depicting the future of the Church “in speech, gesture, or action” [sermone, gestu, vel actione]; this revelatory mimesis is complicated insofar as it is an imitation of things both hidden and exposed [aperta vel occulta], of events which have happened but also of future events that are apparent only to God.113 Pareus privileges this tragic imitation over things “preparatory and supplemental” [praeparatoria & apparatus] to the drama—that is, those figures and interstitial choruses that populate Revelation, ancillary to the prophecies, which are intended to inform audiences or draw them in with “musical accord pertaining to the decorum and agreeableness of the drama” [musico concentu . . . ad decorum & jucunditatem Dramatis pertinentes].114 The first vision, for instance, serves the decorum of the work, as a prologue [prologus] wherein audiences meet John the Evangelist, the “actor and interlocutor throughout the work” [Actor, & passim interlocutor].115 It is thus a dramatic introduction to ecclesiastical history, “entirely doctrinal” [tota doctrinalis] and not a prophetic vision. The more important component of tragedy—mimesis—is reserved for prophecy. While Vision I is preparatory and doctrinal, the remaining six visions (II–VII) are properly “prophetic of future things” [fatidica de futuris].116

110  P1622, 23–4; P1644, 19. 111  Many of the divisions he introduces, Pareus announces, have in one way or another “been treated of by many Interpreters” [fuerunt ἐκ τῶν πολλῶν]. P1622, 23–4, 35–7; P1644, 19, 30–2; Bauckham [1978], 14. 112  P1622, 35; P1644, 30. 113  P1622, 31; P1644, 26. 114  P1622, 31; P1644, 26. 115  P1622, 23–4, 35; P1644, 19, 30. 116  P1622, 23–4; P1644, 19.



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The prophecies in Revelation, in other words, are located solely in the latter six visions. And here Pareus introduces yet another crucial distinction, between “universal” and “particular” visions, to register the historical scope of each vision. The history of the Church, he argues, can be divided into four discrete historical periods [periodi or intervalla]. The Church emerged in the first period, which begins with the events detailed in the Acts of the Apostles and extends across the first three centuries after Christ’s ascension, as Christianity developed under pagan laws and endured Roman tyrants. In the early fourth century, the Emperor Constantine ushered in the second period, granting Christian princes control over the Church. The second period saw relative peace, but also increasing corruption and exploitation, leading to the appearance of Antichrist: Pope Boniface III in Rome and Muhammad in the east. Thus the third period began with Antichrist’s emergence in the seventh century; Antichrist assumed power in Rome and used the papacy to systematically oppress the true Church throughout Europe. The two witnesses of Revelation 11 arrived during this third period—Pareus, after Foxe, identifies the witnesses as Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, executed by Antichrist at the Council of Constance in 1415/16—and Luther’s continuation of their work in 1517 marks its end.117 The fourth and final period, then, began in 1517 and includes both “the reformation of the Church from papism and the decline of the papacy” [Ecclesia à Papismo reformatae, & Papatus inclinati]; we occupy this fourth period, which will continue until Antichrist’s destruction and the end of the world.118 The full history of the Church spans all four periods, but Pareus calls the events of the latter two periods “the Tragedy of Antichrist,” chronicling his ascendency, his “rage and judgment” [grassatione & judicio], and “the Church’s war and victory against him.”119 Thus Pareus designates those visions “universal” which dramatize, however obliquely, the complete history of the Church, from its inception to its portended end. Universal visions depict all four periods of the Church. “Particular” visions, in turn, only dramatize the latter two periods of the Church, the tragedy of Antichrist. All six of the prophetic visions (universal and particular) depict the tragedy of Antichrist, but the particular visions only depict the tragedy of Antichrist. Pareus identifies four universal visions: Vision II, the account of the seven seals in Revelation 4–7; Vision III, the account of the seven trumpets in Revelation 8–11; Vision IV, which begins with the appearance of the woman in labor and traces the conflict between her child and the dragon across Revelation 12–14; and Vision VII, in Revelation 20–22:5, which includes the captivity and release of the dragon, Christ’s thousand-year rule, the final judgment, and the heavenly Jerusalem. Each universal vision, Pareus argues, has a foundational dramatic structure as well as a cast of dramatic personae and phaenomena. Just as tragedians “generally divide their dramas into acts, scenes, and choruses,” Pareus observes the same in each “prophetic drama.”120 In this sense, he refers directly to the “Forma singularum 117  P1622, 30; P1644, 25. See also Firth [1979], 103. 118  P1622, 30; P1644, 25. 119  P1622, 30; P1644, 25. 120  P1622, 31: “Tragoedi . . . dramata sua in actus, scenas, & choros ferè distinguere solent, quod in hoc etiam Dramate prophetico observatum deprehendo.” P1644, 26.

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visionum tragica”—that is, to “the tragic form of each vision.”121 Pareus divides each of the four universal visions into “acts” [actus], corresponding to Donatus’ description of the vicissitudes of the plot: The first act of the universal visions includes the protasis of the calamities with which pagans and heretics will assail the Church until the appearance of Antichrist. The second act, parallel to the first act, prefigures comforts that stand opposite to the calamities of the pious [in this period, until the appearance of Antichrist]. The third act adumbrates the epitasis of the calamities, or the new and more troublesome struggles under Antichrist. Finally, the fourth act, parallel to the third act, includes the catastrophe of everything evil—the decline of the reign of Antichrist and the casting of other enemies into the place of fire, in opposition to the glorious victory and vindication of the Church.122

Whereas Donatus used these terms (protasis, epitasis, catastrophe) to understand comic plots, Pareus calls the plots of the visions “tragic,” probably because of the grave subject matter as well as Evanthius’ important comment, that “tragedy is often faithful to history” [tragoedia saepe de historia fide petitur], as opposed to comic plots, which are “always fictive” [omnis comedia de fictis est argumentis].123 Each of the universal visions has a complete plot, corresponding to the universal history of the Church. Vision III, for instance, is a universal vision with a complete tragic plot. It begins in Revelation 8:1–5, as an angel, standing before God’s throne, fills a golden censer with sacred fire and casts it to earth—a mysterious image which Pareus interprets as Christ delivering the Gospel to the apostles, the foundation of the primitive Church.124 This serves as a sort of prologus to the first act, in which several angels appear in succession and sound trumpets, each trumpet speaking obliquely to the corruption and oppression endemic to the early Church, before Antichrist appears. When the third angel sounds its trumpet, for instance, and the star named Wormwood falls to earth, Pareus takes this to signify the heretics who thrived within the Church during the first 600 years of ecclesiastical history.125 As the fifth angel sounds his trumpet, in turn, another star falls from heaven, unleashing a swarm of locusts from the abyss—an image that Pareus interprets as the emergence of Antichrist in Rome and the spread of his disciples. Thus the first act serves as a protasis, addressing the calamities of the early Church as well as the rise of Antichrist and his minions; the sixth angel, subsequently, addresses Antichrist’s ascendancy in the East, from the origin of Islam to its dominance in the Mediterranean region. The second act spans Revelation 10, wherein a powerful angel arrives and delivers a book to John; this covers the same period of history as the first act, but complements 121  P1622, 31. 122 P1622, 32: “Primus universalium visionum Actus habet [πρ]ότασιν calamitatum, quibus Ecclesia usque ad exortum Antichristi cum Paganis & haereticis conflictabitur. Secundus primò [π]αράλληλ[ος] solatia piorum calamitatibus opposita praefigurat. Tertius ἐπίτασιν calamitatum seu nova & graviora Ecclesiae certamina sub Antichristo adumbrat. Quartus denique tertio [π]αράλληλ[ος] habet catastrophen malorum omnium: regni Antichristiani inclinationem, hostiumque aliorum in locum ignis abjectionem: contra Ecclesiae victoriam & vindicationem in gloriam”; P1644, 27. 123  Evanthius [1962], 21. 124  P1622, 332; P1644, 157. 125  P1622, 344–5; P1644, 162.



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its terrors, offering pious audiences hope and comfort. The Church faces new and more serious dangers in the third act, the epitasis, which begins with the Reformation, as John is instructed to measure the temple of God as well as those who worship there. The arrival of the two witnesses signals the Reformation, but at this point, in his commentary on Vision III, Pareus is reluctant to identify the witnesses directly, or to fix dates in history; he suggests, rather, that the third act might have begun at the Council of Constance or in Luther’s Wittenberg a century later, and cautiously intimates that God often accomplishes the work of Reformation by employing administrators in pairs: Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, Luther and Melanchthon, Bucer and Capito, Zwingli and Johannes Oecolampadius, Calvin and Guillaume Farel.126 Nevertheless, it is a turbulent and violent period marked by persecution, as the witnesses are promptly killed by the emergent beast, signifying “the great rage of Satan and Antichrist against the preachers of the gospel,” the Reformers.127 This third act ends as an earthquake devastates Babylon, destroying the adversaries of the Church and bringing about the catastrophe of the fourth act, where the seventh angel blows its trumpet, announcing God’s glorious victory, the vindication of the Church, and the Last Judgment. Vision III ends with a chorus of twenty-four elders who give thanks to God, “concluding the prophetic action with a musical accord pertinent to the decorum and agreeableness of the drama.”128 The two particular visions, V and VI, are markedly different. They only signify events in the latter two periods of ecclesiastical history: the tragedy of Antichrist. This is not only a matter of historical scope, but of structure as well. Pareus clearly stipulates that these particular visions lack a protasis; they only contain the epitasis and catastrophe because “they only depict Antichrist’s tragedy, rage, decline, and destruction,” omitting the Church’s early struggles with Roman tyrants as well as the rule of Christian princes.129 Visions V and VI, then, only deliver the latter parts of a tragedy—in Pareus’ Latin, these visions are only “absolvuntur,” “loosened,” “untied,” “brought to a close.”130 From a classical or formal perspective, the plots that unfold in the particular visions are incomplete. Whereas Naogeorgus and Foxe point to the absent catastrophe, these particular visions lack a beginning, a protasis, while also drawing attention to the unfulfilled future, to the catastrophe that is depicted in Revelation but which is nonetheless still imminent in history. Pareus takes this to explain the disorienting form of the Apocalypse and to underscore the importance of recognition, calibrated to the prophecies in Revelation, in a manner that follows Negri’s Tragedia. The “particular” Vision VI, for instance, which Pareus calls “the most splendid vision of all” [omnium luculentissimae], begins in medias res as “Antichrist is exhibited to the view of all men under the image of a whore riding upon a beast.”131 There is no representation of the primitive Church, no prophetic 126  P1622, 503–4; P1644, 236–7. 127  P1622, 320–2; P1644, 149–51. 128 P1622, 31: “claudentes musico concentu actiones fatidicas, ad decorum & jucunditatem Dramatis pertinentes”; P1644, 26. 129  P1622, 32; P1644, 27 [my emphasis]. 130  P1622, 32; P1644, 27. 131  To make things even more (unduly) confusing, Pareus actually divides Vision VI into four discrete acts, but in this specific case the four acts only compass the epitasis and catastrophe, as is appropriate for the particular visions. P1622, 32, 864–5, 1058; P1644, 27, 404, 497.

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account of its early calamities or developments. Instead, Pareus pointedly declares that the purpose of this particular vision is to expose Antichrist to the world, detailing only the most intense period of his reign in the papacy. Antichrist is introduced as the Whore of Babylon, drunk on the blood of the saints; Pareus collates this terrifying image with Reformation martyrologies in French, German, and English as well as histories of the Spanish Inquisition, all of which detail the persecution of the pious under various pejorative names: Waldensians, Wycliffites, Hussites, Lutherans, Huguenots, among so many others.132 The nations of the world are already under Antichrist’s sway at the beginning of the vision, as Pareus identifies the horns of the beast and the corresponding kings as “those who have thus far governed the Christian world at the Roman Pontiff ’s pleasure,” having surrendered their power and authority to the papacy.133 The plot of the tragic vision proceeds quickly from this epitasis, depicting the persecution of the Church by a seemingly indomitable Antichrist, to the catastrophe precipitated by God through the Refor­ mation, as many kings and magistrates forsake the Whore of Babylon, abandoning Rome, repenting their sins, and beginning to restore “the true worship of God, according to the Gospel.”134 The personae that speak and act across Revelation 18—the angel who announces the fall of Babylon; the unidentified voice that warns the pious to flee Babylon; the kings, merchants, and sea captains who lament its collapse; and the mighty angel who casts the millstone into the sea—all confirm that Babylon is indeed Rome, and that the papacy is the office of Antichrist. In Revelation 19, moreover, several distinct choruses look forward to the catastrophe before Christ actually appears on a white horse, riding to war against the bestial Antichrist, his false prophet, and their followers, all of whom are roundly defeated and cast into perdition. The end of Vision VI even recalls scenes of classical tragedy as the bodies of Antichrist’s followers lie unburied on the battlefield where birds feast on their flesh. Tragedy affords Pareus a precise language to distinguish between the visions and to address issues of scope, plot, and historical reference. Only the universal visions, he argues, depict the history of the early Church. Hardly inconsequential, it is on this ground that Pareus issues a direct challenge to his chief exegetical adversary, the Spanish Jesuit Luis de Alcázar, the author of the 1614 commentary Vestigatio Arcani Sensus in Apocalypsi. In this influential account, Alcázar advocates the preterist interpretation of Revelation, insisting that most of the events revealed to John had already taken place before the fourth century. Thus Alcázar’s Revelation is almost entirely a history of the early Church, its enigmatic prophecies already fulfilled as Christianity emerged in distinction from Judaism and in triumph over Babylon, i.e. pagan Rome.135 The work, he admits, is “composed in a prophetic style” [prophetico stilo conscriberetur], but it is nevertheless largely a historical account of “prior events of the Church, which had already come to pass” [priores Ecclesiae eventus, qui iam praeterierant].136 For the preterist Alcázar, the historical 132  P1622, 884; P1644, “504” [wrong pagination—actually Ggg 3v]. 133  P1622, 916; P1644, 433. 134  P1622, 928; P1644, 439. 135  Koester [2014], 55–8. 136  Alcasar [1619], 6 [my emphasis].



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scope of Revelation is basically limited to the period before the fourth century—that is, in Pareus’ terms, to the first period of ecclesiastical history, to the protasis. The Beast and the False Prophet of Revelation 19:20–21 are not catastrophic figures proper to the tragedy of Antichrist but rather represent, in broad allegorical terms, “the world and the flesh, both hostile to the Christian religion” in its infancy; in Alcázar’s account, their defeat came in antiquity with “the conversion of the Roman world, or Empire, to Christ.”137 Revelation is thus the story of the Church’s ascendancy over its adversaries in ancient Rome, and Alcázar’s Tridentine Catholicism is continuous with this early history. John’s allegorical account of the Roman conversion to Christianity in antiquity underwrites the abiding authority of the Roman Church—that is, the papacy. Only certain events depicted in the final chapters of Revelation remain unfulfilled: persecution under Antichrist, the ultimate triumph of the Roman Church over Antichrist, the resurrection and Christ’s “thousand-year reign” (which, Alcázar contends, is a fabula that is not to be taken literally), and the Last Judgment.138 In Alcázar’s commentary, the papacy emerges in opposition to Antichrist, and the Revelation testifies to its legitimacy and authority. The preterist Alcázar insists, then, that most of Revelation came to pass in ­antiquity, and that the work is best read by his contemporaries as an allegorical account of early ecclesiastical history.139 Nevertheless, Alcázar is left to explain the prophetic style of the work. Put simply: prophecies generally refer to future events, but in Alcázar’s account the prophecies are largely fulfilled. Thus, in the preface to the Vestigatio Arcani Sensus in Apocalypsi, immediately after he summarizes the misguided millenarian and “Calvinist” approaches to Revelation, Alcázar turns to the prophetic style of the work. He promises to explore issues “concerning the time in which the Revelation was written” [De tempore, quo scripta fuerit], exploiting the degree to which the Latin “tempus” at once refers to “time” and “tense,” how an investigation of the origin and composition of the work is also an investigation of its grammar.140 And where the grammar of the Revelation is concerned, he turns to that enduring staple of elementary humanist education, Virgil’s Aeneid, to determine how “it may be possible to express things which have already happened by means of the future tense” [quo pacto potuerit per futurum enunciare ea, quae iam

137 Alcasar [1619], 807: “Bestia & Pseudopropheta denotari mundum & carnem Christianae Religioni infestos, & per Ecclesiae victoriam, ac Romani mundi siue Imperii conversionem ad Christum, dici meritò mundum atque carnem Ecclesiae persecutores in inferorum ignem viuos fuisse deturbatos.” 138  Alcasar [1619], 809–11, 816–23. 139  Alcázar even suggests, subtly, that Revelation resembles a dramatic work: Revelation 1 includes a preliminary summary of its contents, “just as in any dramatic series of events [actione], whether comic or tragic, the first character [persona] who appears in a scene puts forth an argument detailing the entire action in few words.” Alcasar [1619], 178: “ut in quavis actione, sive comica, sive tragica sit, persona quae in scenam prodit prima, totius actionis argumentum paucis explicet. Certè id in comoedijs, & in tragoedijs praestari debere praecipit Aristoteles 3. Rhetoricorum cap. 17 [sic]. Quod licèt hac nostra tempestate (ut aiunt) ferè non observetur; id tamen ab Aristotele fuisse traditum, argumento est multò rationi esse congruentius.” See AR, 430–1 [III.15]. 140  Alcasar [1619], 4–5.

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praeterierant].141 Alcázar moves from the language of the Revelation to the key prophetic moments in the Aeneid, claiming that “even children know the prophecy of Anchises to Aeneas, devised by Virgil in Book 6, and another similar prophecy in Book 8, engraved onto the shield of Aeneas by the legendary hand of Vulcan, where that ingenious poet disclosed a future, as it were, that had already happened when he had written them.”142 Alcázar is careful not to collapse the distinctions between Virgilian prophecy and divine revelation, affirming “how inferior that is, which the poet devises by feigning, to that which our prophet most truly reveals in his assertions.”143 Nevertheless, he suggests that the texts work in similar ways, even if “what was poetic fiction in Virgil was prophetic truth in John” [Quod igitur fuit in Virgilio fictio poëtica, idem in Ioanne extitit veritas prophetica].144 Prophecy is a mode of writing history. Virgil employs prophecy and a future tense to “bring glory and fame to the history of the Romans” [ut Romanorum histori[a]e decus & splendorem afferret], Christ, “to reveal the entire history of his people” [suae gentis historiam omnem revelasse].145 It is Christ’s history, in this continuous prophetic tense, that the angel “repeated in the presence of John himself ” [ab Angelis coram ipso Ioanne repetitam].146 Pareus bristles at these suggestions, that most of the events foretold in Revelation occurred before the fourth century, and that its prophecies refer to past events. A prophecy “only concerns future things” [non est nisi de futuris], he claims, and Revelation, as prophecy, depicts future events, albeit with occasional “things of the past intermingled” [praeteritorum . . . admixtum].147 This is absolutely crucial to the scope of the work, and the basis of his distinction between universal and particular visions. Drama—and tragedy in particular—affords Pareus a formidable structural language, enabling him to complicate linear and historical readings of Revelation as well as interpretations that rely on preexisting notions of allegory. Alcázar argues that Revelation employs a prophetic style to communicate past ecclesiastical history. But for Pareus, prophecy is tragic mimesis that looks inevitably forward to its completion in an undisclosed future. Alcázar’s symbolic historical account of Revelation traces the career of the primitive Church, looking forward only to the mystical events depicted in chapters 20–22. Pareus, however, offers an alternative account of Revelation, insisting that the dramatic visions defy linear history—­ not only because they are incomplete but also because Revelation proceeds by tragic repetition.

141  Alcasar [1619], 4. On Virgil and curriculum see Enterline [2012], 75–80. 142  Alcasar [1619], 6: “Notum est, vel pueris, Anchisae ad Aeneam vaticinium à Virgilio confictu[m] lib. 6. atque aliud simile in Aeneae clypeo fabulosa Vulcani dextera caelato, libr. 8. ubi ingeniosus poëta illa tanquam futura enunciavit, quae iam praeterierat, quando ab eo scripta sunt: quod eo tempore erant futura, quo & ab Anchise praedicta, & à Vulcano finguntur praemonstrata.” 143  Alcasar [1619], 6: “sed quanto minus est, quod fingendo comminiscitur poëta, quàm quod verissimè asserendo enunciat Propheta noster?” 144  Alcasar [1619], 6. 145  Alcasar [1619], 6. 146  Alcasar [1619], 6. 147  P1622, 28; P1644, 23.



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TRAGIC REPETITION Taking into account the crucial distinctions between particular and universal visions, as well as Pareus’ exasperation with Alcázar’s competing interpretation, one can begin to understand how the drama takes shape across Revelation in its entirety. There is a clear prologus to the whole work, spanning chapters 1–3, including the Proemium as well as the first “doctrinal” vision, as the angel exhorts John to “write what you have seen, which includes things as they are now as well as things to come” (Rev. 1:19) and to convey these visions to the seven assemblies named in the first chapter.148 The prologus resembles a letter, a direct address to a specific audience, and invites comparison with the Pauline and Johannine epistles as well as comic prologues by Terence and Plautus or the dedications by their early modern imitators.149 Revelation concludes, moreover, with an Epilogus. But the body of the work does not deliver a single continuous plot for audiences to follow to its end. Instead, it presents a series of prophetic visions, each of which is structured as a (complete/universal or incomplete/particular) tragedy. Revelation is “tragic” insofar as we encounter six successive visions, each of which depicts the tragedy of Antichrist and (contra Alcázar) where the triumph of the early Church over pagan Rome is marginal, limited to the protases of the four universal visions. Revelation thus resembles a procession or cycle—a sequence of distinct tragedies, all presenting the same material in different ways—much more than it resembles a continuous stage tragedy like, say, King Lear. It is as if Pareus dramatizes the experience of reading Pammachius, the Tragedia, and Christus Triumphans in succession; all of these plays make similar claims about the same material (Revelation and ecclesiastical history), but depict things differently. This is exactly how Pareus frames “this heavenly drama,” Revelation, wherein: distinct matters—or rather (as it will be seen) the same matters pertaining to the church, not past, but to come—are represented in different visions, and their diverse acts are given new shape by different choruses, the same matter expressed at one moment by a chorus of twenty-four elders and four beasts, at another time by a chorus of angels, or of those who bear the seal of God in their foreheads, or of cithara players and others with new songs and venerable hymns—not so much to diminish the weariness of the spectators as to imbue the minds of readers with holy meditations, to convey them up to things heavenly.150

148  P1622, 10–13, 24; P1644, 5–8, 19. 149  See Dunsch [2014]. 150  P1622, 20: “Sicut enim in Tragoedia humana, ad res gestas repraesentandas ex diversis scenis personae aliae pose alias in theatrum prodeunt, rursusque abscedunt: varii item musicorum vel citharoedorum chori, actus alios atque alios distinguunt, & quiescentibus personis suavi modulorum concentu fastidium spectatoribus mulcent, attentionemque sustinent: Ita plane in coelesti hoc Dramate, aliis atque aliis ostentis, alias atque alias, vel potius (ut videbitur) easdem res Ecclesiae, non praeteritas, sed futuras repraesentari, eorumque diversos actus à variis choris, modo viginti quatuor senum et quatuor animalium, modo angelorum, modo signatorum in frontibus, modo citharoedorum, &c. canticis novis, hymnis venerandis, non tàm ad taedium spectatoribus minuendum, quàm ad animos lectorum sanctis meditationibus imbuendos, inque coelestia subvehendos, interpolari, res ipsa loquitur”; P1644, 24–5.

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There are recurring personae across the visions, continuities that give Revelation consistency, but on this Pareus is clear: “Revelation does not depict a continuous history” [Apocalypsis non repraesentat continuam historiam].151 It is a tragedy composed of tragedies. To make this point clear, Pareus draws an explicit distinction between Revelation and some principal works of early modern dramata sacra. Revelation, he claims, is not like the story [historia] of Daniel, or Susanna, or John the Baptist, all of which are easily “represented in a comedy” [in comoedia repraesentatur]—a signal reference to three popular works by the “Christian Terence,” Cornelius Schonaeus: the comoediae sacrae Daniel and Susanna, and the tragicomoedia Baptistes.152 Schonaeus mines Holy Writ for compelling exempla, depicting past events as they occurred, episode by episode, from the beginning of a historia or fabula to its end. Revelation, however, is not merely “a representation of things past,” nor does it depict events unfolding in the time of history, in one continuous narrative.153 As “historia” might be rendered into English as “history” or “plot,” Pareus emphasizes that Revelation is neither a historical narrative that proceeds chronologically nor a narrative with a single, unified plot. This, he claims, is how Alcázar interprets Revelation, incorrectly, as an allegorical representation of things that have already happened. Revelation is, rather, repetitive. Across the book, the same essential matters are treated several times. Only the expression changes, the language and the images used to convey this core material. The same material, the tragedy of Antichrist, is recapitulated. This, Pareus insists, is the “general method of Revelation” which both Augustine and the Professor of Theology at Lausanne Nicolas Colladon make most apparent in their comments on the work.154 By his own admission, Augustine and Colladon exercise the greatest influence on Pareus. In his City of God, for instance, Augustine claims that John “repeats the same things in many different ways [sic eadem multis modis repetit], so that he seems to be speaking of different matters whereas he is in fact speaking of the same things in different words.”155 Colladon emphasizes a similar repetition and recapitulation in his Methodus Facilima ad Explicationem Sacrosanctae Apocalypseωs Ioannis Theologi (1581).156 In a passage that Pareus reproduces in his own commentary, Colladon acknowledges “the necessity of foreshadowing the same thing in diverse ways” [necessaria causa . . . ejusdem rei variè praesignificandae] in order to comfort and direct the pious; he also recognizes the rhetorical value of repetition and gradation [gradatio], which John uses to great effect.157 Revelation is not a single, continuous vision but rather a series of separate visions. The visions, which repeat the same things in diverse manners, become less obscure as the work

151  P1622, 28; P1644, 23. 152  P1622, 28; van de Venne [1983], 367–433; [1984], 211, 226, 237; [1985], 1–113. It is possible, but far less likely, that Pareus refers here to Sixtus Birck’s 1537 Susanna or George Buchanan’s Baptistes, first printed in 1578. 153  P1622, 28; P1644, 23. 154  P1622, 26; P1644, 21. 155  P1622, 26; P1644, 21; Augustine [1998], 1004–5 [XX.17]; [1993], 446. 156  Colladon [1583], 19. Although Pareus refers to a 1584 edition, his page reference suggests that he used the 1583 edition; the work itself was initially printed in 1581. See also Backus [2000], 74–7. 157  P1622, 27; P1644, 22; Colladon [1583], 19.



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progresses.158 Colladon explains this gradation by turning to the human senses. The opening of the seven seals, which Pareus locates in Vision II, affects the audiences visually, as the sequence “rouses and stimulates the eyes of observers from afar” [oculos . . . eminus intuentium excitat, commovet]; the seven trumpets in Vision III, in turn, are more startling and urgent, resounding in the ears of the pious and impious alike; and the pouring of the seven vials, which Pareus locates in Vision V, is more effective and terrifying yet, poised “to wash over men in their entirety, and to burn them with the most bitter feeling” [totos homines perfundere, & acerrimo sensu ustulare], an intense awareness or anxiety concerning the coming catastrophe.159 Thus the visions become progressively more moving, even immersive. But Pareus insists that they also become clearer, and that Revelation interprets itself as it moves forward by repetition. The history or plot [historia] of the Beast is obscure in Visions III and IV, but it becomes most apparent [evidentissima] in Vision VI; Pareus exposes this progression in his commentary, as it is in his treatment of Vision VI that he demonstrates, definitively, that Babylon is Rome and that the papacy is Antichrist.160 This is of course evident early in the work, but demonstrated conclusively in Visions VI and VII. Pareus is reluctant to identify key historical figures when they appear in earlier visions, as their identities become more clear in later visions. In his treatment of the two witnesses in Vision III, for instance, he offers several possible interpretations, even as he suggests that the measurement of the temple in Revelation 11:1–2 corresponds to the Reformation. Nevertheless, by Vision IV he confidently identifies the angel at Revelation 14:6 as John Wycliffe and the two witnesses as Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague.161 Heretofore, interpreters who misunderstood or neglected this dramatic recapitulation have imagined “unnecessary mysteries in things which either only serve dramatic decorum or which have a manifest explanation in the method of the visions,” misunderstanding “the many songs, the many hymns, the successions of so many recurring angels and actors in diverse visions, the often repeated appearances of the beast, of Babylon, or of the Last Judgment themselves.”162 The revelations are progressive, becoming clearer and more intense with every tragic reiteration. Pareus’ thesis concerning repetition and reiteration involves a dramatic strategy with which students of early English tragedy are familiar. I refer here to the first blankverse tragedy in English, Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s seminal Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex—in particular, to the relationship between the dumb shows that precede every act; the plot itself, as it unfolds across the work; and the choruses that punctuate every act.163 Each dumb show is a representation of a concept or principle, 158  P1622, 29; P1644, 24. Although Pareus does not cite him in this regard, Bede offers theses on recapitulation. See Backus [2000], xiv–xv. 159  P1622, 27; P1644, 22; Colladon [1583], 19. 160  P1622, 29; P1644, 24. 161  P1622, 30, 713–16, 469–518; P1644, 25, 337–9, 221–46. 162  P1622, 20: “Quod qui non observant, & observarunt hactenus, equidem quid tot cantica, tot hymni, tot angelorum & personarum in diversis visionibus recurrentium vices, quid toties iterata φαινόμενα bestiae, Babylonis, extremi judicii sibi velint, mirantur, quaeruntque & excogitant ὑσ[τ]ερώσεις [sic], anticipationes, recapitulationes atque mysteria non necesaria in iis, quae vel decoro dramatico tantum serviunt, vel in methodo visionum, de qua mox dicam, apertam rationem habent”; P1644, 24–5. 163  Gorboduc obviously belongs to the De casibus tradition, where tragedy is a mode of history and the tragedian, depicting the rise and fall of powerful men and great kingdoms, lays bare the harsh

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abstracted from history, performed in a markedly different style than the acts of the tragedy; each subsequent act relocates the concept or principle in the continuous plot of the tragedy, in history. Before Act I, for instance, we read that: the music of violins began to play, during which came in upon the stage six wild men clothed in leaves. Of whom the first bare on his neck a fagot of small sticks, which they all, both severally and together, assayed with all their strengths to break; but it could not be broken by them. At the length, one of them plucked out one of the sticks, and brake it; and the rest plucking out all the other sticks one after another, did easily break them, the same being severed; which being conjoined, they had before attempted in vain. After they had this done, they departed the stage, and the music ceased.164

This is not a mysterious or ponderous emblem, and that is precisely the point: the dumb show depicts a fact or commonplace that is related to but irreducible to the action of the play.165 The episode “signified that a state knit in unity doth continue strong against all force, but being divided, is easily destroyed” before the abstract political lesson is represented again in a different style, as King Gorboduc divides his kingdom between his sons.166 The action in the dumb show, then, is related to the representation of history in Gorboduc, but remains distinct. In this particular case, the “wild men” enact a political lesson regarding unity and division. The meaning becomes clearer, and more engaging, once audiences encounter the same lesson in Act I. The choruses, in turn, reiterate the material yet again at the end of each act, employing a different form than the spoken verse that comprises the action. The dumb shows establish a principle or foreshadow an event that is given weight and urgency in the ensuing performance. The dumb show preceding Act III features a procession of mourners “betokening death and sorrow to ensue upon the ill-advised misgovernment and dissension of brethren, as befell upon the murder of Ferrex by his younger brother”—a point that is immediately repeated, as the personae across the short third act grapple with political calamity and strife.167 In the dumb show preceding Act V, moreover, the classical furies Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone drive a procession of kings and queens who murdered their own children, intended to signify the “unnatural murders to follow.”168 Again, the act that follows reiterates this scene under different circumstances, as does the chorus; Gorboduc, like Pareus’ Revelation, proceeds by way of repetition and recapitulation. In Revelation, however, Pareus identifies six distinct representations of the same material—the tragedy of Antichrist—rather than three (the dumb show-act-chorus structure of Gorboduc). vicissitudes of political life. Based on an episode in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s foundational Historia Regum Britanniae, Gorboduc has understandably been called “a kind of dramatized Mirror for Magistrates.” Sackville himself contributed an “Induction” and “The complaint of Henrye duke of Buckingham” to A Mirror for Magistrates, the most influential Elizabethan version of the medieval genre. Sackville’s contributions first appear in the 1563 edition. See Baldwin [1563], cxvir–cxxxviiv; Budra [2000], 14–38, 52–4; Kelly [1993], 170–85; Howarth [1963], 77–99; Geoffrey of Monmouth [1966], 87–9; Mehl [1965], 32. 164  To the letter, the accounts of the dumb shows in the printed editions of Gorboduc are records of performance, written in the past tense. Sackville and Norton [1970], 8. 165  Mehl [1965], 29–41. 166  Sackville and Norton [1970], 8. 167  Sackville and Norton [1970], 38. 168  Sackville and Norton [1970], 44–5.



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Although Norton and Sackville’s tragedy is not far removed from the world of Reformation theology and dramata sacra, it is extremely unlikely that Pareus knew Gorboduc.169 But Gorboduc and Pareus’ Revelation nevertheless share a preoccupation with repetition and reiteration, a dramatic pattern that is generally foreign to classical tragedy. Critics since Sir Philip Sidney have noted this, emphasizing Norton and Sackville’s departures from classical form; nowhere is this more apparent than in the dumb shows which precede each of the five acts and which give Gorboduc its distinctive shape and tenor.170 Pareus sees similar dramatic elements at work across Revelation, none of which are native to classical tragedy or to the De casibus tradition to which Gorboduc also belongs. The successive visions in Revelation reiterate the tragedy of Antichrist, the scope of which becomes more clear with every turn. If Gorboduc helps us grasp Pareus’ vision of tragedy, however, the respective writers marshal dramatic repetition to different ends. In Gorboduc, Norton and Sackville employ dumb shows and choruses to underscore the general or universal meaning of each historical act as the events of the play unfold. In Revelation, however, the appearance and reappearance of prophetic types enables Pareus and his readers to imagine and comprehend events which have not yet happened. In this sense, prophecy and tragedy converge in Pareus’ commentary on Revelation in his idiosyncratic notion of typology. T Y P O L O G Y A S P RO P H E C Y Pareus argues that Revelation is divided into discrete tragic visions, and that the drama takes shape through repetition and recapitulation. In turn, Pareus identifies prophetic types that populate the visions, giving the work consistency without taking recourse to linear narrative or chronology. Revelation, in other words, exhibits “typical speeches and actions on the heavenly stage” [sermonibus vel actionibus typicis . . . in coelesti theatro]; the tragic visions are “typical prophecies” [vaticinia typica].171 As such, Revelation demands a tragic typology, a method of interpretation that is distinct from orthodox versions of typology current in the early seventeenth century. Pareus’ project in the commentary is to illustrate the “harmony and agreement of types” [harmoniam atque consensum typorum], to demonstrate how diverse types emerge and correspond across the prophetic visions of the 169  The Reformation provenance of the tragedy is patent. Norton’s own substantial contributions to the English Reformation include his translation of John Calvin’s complete Institutio Christianae Religionis (1559), the first in English, which appeared only months before he collaborated with Sackville on Gorboduc for the Inns of Court audience. Gorboduc itself spoke directly to the politics of the Elizabethan Reformation, in both its initial performances in 1561/2 as well as in its first authorized publication in 1570 (by Foxe’s comrade John Daye), as Norton and Sackville addressed the sensitive matter of succession in a post-Marian milieu, of great interest to diverse evangelical communities across England. When the tragedy was printed with the authors’ consent in 1570, the Elizabethan government faced what Michael A.R. Graves calls “its first major political crisis”; John Daye included Gorboduc in Norton’s collected works, All such treatises as have been lately published by Thomas Norton (1570), as Norton and his political allies responded to the crisis, rallying against Mary Stuart and the malignant influence of Roman Catholicism. See Walker [1998], 196–221; Graves [1994], 91–100, 117–18; Norton [1570]. 170  Charlton [1921], cxl; Smith [1988], 112; and Sidney [1973], 112–13. 171  P1622, 25, 21; P1644, 20, 16 [my emphasis].

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Apocalypse.172 Pareus insists that Revelation is its own interpreter, explaining how types relate to each other across the work. He considers the sequence of the types, uses the more obvious types to interpret the obscure, and occasionally refers to the “types and phrases of the ancient prophets.”173 For Pareus, typology offers an alternative to literal and allegorical representations of historical figures and events. As the prophetic elements in the work, these tragic types look forward to the future catastrophe depicted in Revelation. They are thus irreducible to history and resist interpretations, like Alcázar’s, that fail to account for Revelation as prophecy. It is in this sense that types are properly tragic and prophetic, as they represent, “in speech, gesture, or action, future events concerning the Church”; types take shape through mimesis, “ by means of a certain imitation,” but this is, paradoxically, an imitation of things which have yet to happen or appear.174 Through recapitulation, rather, these types—made “more palpable” or “more apparent” [manifestioribus] in their stirring and effective tragic presentation—intimate or approximate a future that is only apparent to God, but which is nonetheless foreshadowed in Revelation.175 In Pareus’ Revelation, the imitation actually precedes the “real” appearance of the imitated thing or event in history. In his innovative approach to typology, Pareus recruits and transforms tragedy into a mode of prophecy. In his claims concerning typology and method, Pareus departs quite drastically from his contemporaries. Orthodox approaches to typology were primarily concerned with the fundamental connection between the Hebrew and Greek Testaments. Calvin took Old Testament events as types, figures, or shadows of salvation in Christ. The Law articulated in Deuteronomy, for instance, is a “type” [τύπος] of doctrine (Romans 6:17), an “express image of the righteousness which Christ engraves on our hearts.”176 Subsequently, under Beza’s guidance, students at the University of Geneva mined the Old Testament for “types” [typis], from the “singulare and extraordinarie” [singularibus & extraordinariis] to the “legall and ordinarie” [legalibus & quotidianis], all looking forward to the sacraments and institutions of the catholic Reformed Church.177 Types, according to Wolfgang Musculus, are particular to the Old Testament dispensation when the “spirite of feare was in the people”; God instituted ceremonies among the Israelites “that his people practysed in certaine fygures and shadowes [figuris & umbris] and thinges to come, shoulde conceive in their minde a certaine faithe, hope, and expectation of them,” but under the sign of fear, not love or understanding.178 And Andreas Hyperius’ description of types is particularly salient as he situates typology directly in relation to the 172  P1622, 33; P1644, 28. 173  P1622, 33; P1644, 28. 174  P1622, 31: “Prophetica voco eas visionum partes seu typos, qui sermone, gestu, vel actione futuros circa Ecclesiam eventus similitudine quadam, aperta vel occulta, repraesentant: & magna parte ex veterum Prophetarum actibus repetuntur”; P1644, 26. 175  P1622, 30; P1644, 24. 176  Calvin also asserted that types or figures are proper to the world of the Old Testament, before Christ, and are no longer available to believers; God appeared to the Israelites as a pillar of fire and a cloud and “although wee in these dayes have no such figures as the Jewes had under Moses,” Calvin claims, “yet notwithstanding GOD giveth us the thing that is of equall value, according also as Saint Paule sheweth [1 Cor. 10:2] saying that the cloud and the fire were a kinde of Baptisme to the auncient fathers.” Calvin [1960], 133; and [1583], 41. 177  de Bèze and de la Faye [1591], 172, 180; [1586], 141. 178  Musculus [1563], 113r, 124v–125r; and [1560], 168, 185.



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varieties of medieval Scriptural interpretation; after exploring how various Patristic interpreters understood the literal, tropological, anagogical, and allegorical senses of Scripture, Hyperius draws an important distinction between typology and allegory: A type, or figure (for interpreters might translate [efferent] the Greek word τύπος as ­“figure”) is when some fact from the Old Testament is introduced and is shown [ostenditur] to have foretold or adumbrated something happening or having been revealed in the New Testament. Allegory, moreover, is when something from either the Old or the New Testament is explained [exponitur] in a new sense and accommodated [accommodatur] to a spiritual doctrine or to a practice of life. A type consists [consistit] in the collation of facts and is entirely historical; an allegory is not taken up as much with facts as with the discourses themselves, from which it produces [depromit] doctrine, and many are of a didactic kind. A type is not generally discussed in the same manner as other things, other than Christ and the Church, the Law and the Gospel, nor is a type accommodated [accommodatur] indiscriminately to our particular roles or characters. But allegory treats any things whatsoever, and is generally accommodated to individuals [personis nostris] for whom it is necessary to be instructed in this and called to the duties of piety. In brief, types are limited to [in angustum contrahuntur] certain things, concerning the person of Christ, the Church, the Law and the Gospel; allegories, on the other hand, extend most broadly and are distributed widely [diffunduntur] across all possible topics.179

Hyperius observes that many interpreters conflate or “confuse allegories and types” [typos & allegorias confundunt], even the Church Fathers.180 But he affirms a crucial difference. Types, grounded in the Old Testament, give consistency to Scripture and are not as flexible or subjective as allegorical figures. In this sense, types are integral to the text itself and do not depend as much on the ingenuity or experience of the interpreter. Hyperius treats allegory as an art of interpretation, as opposed to the manifest types that hold Scripture together without regard for audience or situation. He proceeds, moreover, to offer tentative rules for allegory, warning that allegorical interpretations “ought to be employed rarely and soberly” before criticizing frivolous and misguided attempts to read allegorically.181 Typology warrants no such censure because it is more disciplined, its scope limited to correspondences 179  Hyperius [1582], 366: Typus, seu figura (nam hoc nomine vocem τύπου efferent interpretes) est, cum factu[m] aliquod accersitur è veteri testamento, idque ostenditur praesignificasse, seu adumbrasse aliquid gestum vel gerendum in testamento Novo. Allegoria verò est, cum aliquid sive ex veteri, sive ex novo Testamento, novo sensu exponitur, atq[ue] accommodatur ad spiritualem doctrinam, sive ad vitae institutionem. Typus consistit in factorum collatione, & totus historicus est: allegoria occupatur non tam in factis, quàm in ipsis concionibus, è quibus doctrinam, & multa quae didactici sunt generis depromit. Typus non ferè de aliis rebus sermocinatur, quàm de Christo & ecclesia, de lege & Evangelio, neque passim accommodatur nostris personis: Allegoria verò disserit de rebus quibuscunq[ue], atq[ue] plurimùm acco[m]modatur personis nostris, quas oportet per eam erudiri, atq[ue] ad officia excitari pietatis. Breviter, typi ad certas res, de persona Christi, de Ecclesia, de lege, de Evangelio in angustum contrahuntur: Allegoriae autem latissime pate[n]t, & per quascunque diffunduntur materias. Although he might seem obscure to modern students of Reformation theology, Hyperius ranked among the clearest and most influential resources available to Pareus and contemporaries; his works were integral to theological curricula across Europe. See Burnett [2006], 161–2; and Greenslade [1986], 327. 180  Hyperius [1582], 365, 367. 181  Hyperius [1582], 376–82.

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between Testaments Old and New. Hyperius thus gives a robust account of an emergent Reformed typology, one that he shares with Calvin, Beza, and Musculus but which he articulates in more detail. Types appear in the Old Testament and look forward to the New, adumbrating Christian doctrines, practices, and institutions. Pareus departs from this version of typology when he describes the “diverse types” that populate the Apocalypse.182 Like so many of his Reformation forebears, Pareus is wary of “mystical understandings” or “mystical senses,” “tropologies and moral allegories,” and illicit divinations that further obscure the prophetic meaning of Revelation.183 And some of the types, Pareus argues, are indeed drawn or “repeated” [repetuntur] from the “acts [actibus] of the ancient prophets,” primarily Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah.184 But Pareus is remarkably clear when he asserts that “the types of the Apocalypse do not represent the past history of an ancient people but rather the future of the new Church.”185 The types in Revelation do not correspond with the Old Testament, or with Hebrew or Christian antiquity, but rather with the prophetic future of the Church. Elias Arnold makes this most explicit in his 1644 translation, when he renders Pareus’ “historiam praeteritam veteris populi” as “the foregoing Historie of the Israelitish Church.”186 In other words, Pareus’ “types” point to consistencies across discrete visions that illuminate an uncertain future, not to correspondences between Testaments Old and New. Pareus’ is certainly a textual typology grounded in Scripture. He insists, after all, that Revelation, with its tragic repetitions and reiterations, provides the resources for its own interpretation. But Pareus’ typology is also intimately related to Reformation tragedy, not only in his formal claims but also insofar as he insists on the continuity between the ongoing tragedy of Revelation and the audience’s experience of history. Following Naogeorgus and Foxe, Pareus foregrounds the degree to which the catastrophe is imminent, invoking the audience’s own experience as evidence of its urgency. “In light of past and present events,” he insists, “a good part of these types are thus uncovered and revealed [in apricum prolatum positamque] so that everyday their truth may be seen by the eyes and touched by the hands of those who pay attention and possess the understanding, τὸ νοῦν ἔχουσι, that the Holy Spirit requires.”187 Just as audiences are interpolated into apocalyptic history at the ends of Pammachius and Christus Triumphans, the diverse types that appear across successive visions draw readers into its dramatic milieu. In this sense, Pareus licenses his readers to use their experiences to confirm the prophecies in Revelation; the prophetic types that populate the tragedy enable readers to see the fulfillment of history in their own lives. In its capacity as a tragedy, Revelation is wrested from history and philology and given new prophetic relevance among those audiences who recognize its dramatic form. 182  P1622, 27; P1644, 21. 183  P1622, 17–18; P1644, 12–13. 184  P1622, 31, 15; P1644, 26, 10. 185  P1622, 26; P1644, 21. 186 P1622, 26: “typi Apocalypseos non repraesentent historiam praeteritam veteris populi: sed futuram novae Ecclesiae”; P1644, 21. 187  P1622, 13: “bonam typorum istorum partem lumine eventuum praesentium & praeteritorum sic esse in apricum prolatum positamque, ut veritas eorum oculis cerni, manibusque palpari quotidie possit ab illis, qui, quod requirit Spiritus τὸ ν[οῦ]ν ἔχ[ου]σι mentem habent & attendunt”; P1644, 18.

2 Lodovico Castelvetro’s Heterodox Poetics Tragic Accommodation Lodovico Castelvetro’s Poetica D’Aristotele Vulgarizzata, Et Sposta,1 an Italian translation of Aristotle’s Poetics with an exhaustive commentary, is a landmark work of criticism, a signal treatment of tragedy that influenced virtually every study of Renaissance poetics that emerged in its wake. The Poetica is foundational and original, a comprehensive guide to the Poetics that introduced a number of concepts which would define tragedy for generations. It was Castelvetro, for instance, who discovered—or, properly, invented—the “Aristotelian unities” of time, place, and action, an intervention that bore inordinate influence in the history of the reception of the Poetics.2 Castelvetro’s Poetica follows in a well-developed Italian commentary tradition, drawing on Francesco Robortello’s In Librum Aristotelis de Arte Poetica Explicationes (1548), Vincenzo Maggi and Bartolomeo Lombardi’s In Aristotelis Librum de Poetica Communes Explanationes (1550), and Pietro Vettori’s Comentarii In Primum Librum Aristotelis de Arte Poetarum (1560). Yet the vernacular Poetica departs from previous commentaries insofar as Castelvetro renders what he believes to be an otherwise fragmentary and contradictory work consistent. According to Castelvetro, on its own “the Poetics is no more than an accumulation of notes which Aristotle collected to serve as an aid to his memory when he would later undertake the task of sifting the good from the bad to compose a book that should be well organized and self-consistent throughout.”3 That book is lost to us, if it ever existed. Aristotle’s observations in the Poetics, in turn, “are out of their proper order”; he is often opaque, his work incomplete, and, at times, simply wrong.4 For Castelvetro’s sixteenth-century audience, the meaning and utility of Aristotle’s Poetics remained obscure, and Aristotle himself is frequently mistaken, as in those places where the very letter of “Aristotle’s counsel [insegnamento] . . . is void of counsel [voto d’insegnamento].”5 But Castelvetro attempts to make the antique text, however murky or flawed, useful to his contemporaries. Bernard Weinberg is quite right to show how, in many ways, “Castelvetro sets out to refute Aristotle and to suggest his own theories instead”—taking the Poetics as a point of critical departure towards a more original and modern ars poetica.6 His careful collation, translation, and explanation of Aristotle’s work repeatedly tests the philosopher’s authority on Renaissance practices, many of which are anathema 1  Hereafter given in the text as the Poetica. 2  Weinberg [1952], 349; Fogle and Barnouw [2012], 1496. 3  CP, I.52; LC, 22. I have also consulted Castelvetro [1570]; and [1576]. 4  LC, 87; CP, I.234. 5  LC, 137; CP, I.506. 6  Weinberg [1961], 69.

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to the language and scope of the Poetics itself. Castelvetro simultaneously establishes the Poetics as the antique poetics and demonstrates, convincingly, its historical and philosophical limits. Outside of Italy, modern scholars tend to read Castelvetro’s Poetica as a neutral technical work, a commentary on form devoid of any religious conviction whatsoever.7 But his contemporaries refused to read any of his work this way. However influential, the initial publication of the Poetica in Vienna in 1570 came late in a scandalous career. After decades of suspicion and enquiry, the Roman Inquisition formally condemned Castelvetro as a heretic on November 20, 1560. Throughout the 1540s and 1550s, Castelvetro’s scholarly activities and interests were inextricable from his commitments to the reformation of education and the Reformation of the Church. Inquisitors located Castelvetro at the center of Protestant dissent in his native Modena, his humanist inclinations and propaedeutic interventions among the Modenese Accademici symptoms of more nefarious heresies. They were not exactly wrong. Castelvetro tarried long with works by Desiderius Erasmus, Jean Calvin, and Martin Bucer and even translated two key works by Philipp Melanchthon—the 1521 Loci Communes Theologici and the 1539 De Ecclesiae Auctoritate et de Veterum Scriptis Libellus—both of which challenged papal authority and advocated fundamental changes in the character of devotional life. Melanchthon must have appealed to Castelvetro’s scholarly faculties, emphasizing as he does thorough textual engagements informed by knowledge of antique languages, dialectic, and rhetoric.8 As I demonstrate below, Castelvetro’s Poetica is in many ways a Melanchthonian work. One does well to note the continuities across Castelvetro’s career, particularly the extent to which the 1570 Poetica is as much a Reformation salvo against corrupted customs and inadequate knowledge as it is a poetics. Castelvetro exploits the precision and scope of Aristotelian tragedy to argue, however subtly, the bankruptcy of existing devotional practices. The initial 1570 Vienna edition of the Poetica was controversial, and the posthumous 1576 edition, printed at Basel, omits myriad references to sacred performances, Protestant authors, and controversial issues—crucial to the scope of the original version. Castelvetro’s name was added to the Roman Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1596; his anonymous translation of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes had been on the initial Index since 1559.9 Although his writing continued to be printed by sympathetic dissenters in Italy after 1560, albeit without his name on the title pages, Castelvetro’s books were treated as contraband well into the seventeenth century.10 7 Castelvetro’s heterodoxy is entirely absent, for instance, from Bernard Weinberg’s otherwise indispensable corpus of work on Italian Renaissance literary criticism, just as Castelvetro’s modern translator Andew Bongiorno makes little of the charges of heresy levied against him. See Weinberg [1961], 802; and LC, xii–xlviii. 8  Ben-Tov [2009], 135–48. 9 The Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma appeared on the 1590 Index. De Bujanda et al. [1994], 331, 340, 634, 425. The 1596 Index named Castelvetro explicitly and listed his Opera Omnia, printed in 1582. 10  The Inquisitor of Florence, for instance, denied the Cardinal Borghese’s request “to possess and read” Castelvetro’s works, even “for the purpose of correcting them so that new editions can be published.” Tedeschi [1991], 342, 302–5.



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Taking Castelvetro’s adventures in heterodoxy as points of departure, my argument in the chapter is twofold. First, Castelvetro’s Poetica registers a prolonged engagement with Reformation materials, with Erasmus, Melanchthon, and his own Italian contemporaries—Franceso Negri, for instance, whose Tragedia I introduced in Chapter 1; and the writer of the controversial tract Il Beneficio di Christo, Benedetto Fontanini Da Mantova. His Poetica is the result of decades of heterodox experiments in pedagogy and devotional writing, and scholars have heretofore neglected the degree to which Castelvetro’s reading of Aristotle advances a program for the reformation of literature, consonant with Reformation practices and politics.11 Second, Castelvetro recognizes the philosophical purchase of Aristotle’s notes on literature and form; the vernacular Poetica seizes on this, as Castelvetro mines the Poetics for insight into fundamental philosophical questions concerning knowledge and representation. Castelvetro’s comments on tragedy in particular frame a series of pointed observations concerning pleasure, recognition, accommodation, probability, necessity, and credibility. With reference to the archive of dramata sacra and writing on tragedy I explored in the Introduction and Chapter  1, Castelvetro’s is an explicit attempt to recruit Aristotle’s distinctly philosophical treatment of tragedy in the Poetics for the reformation of drama and philosophy as well as belief and devotional life. While Aristotelian tragedy is a precise philosophical resource, however, Castelvetro points to the possibility of accommodation through performance. Castelvetro and his earliest censors recognized what many contemporary readers ignore: the extent to which tragedy is a philosophical and theological genre, the extent to which the Reformation itself is a poetic and a critical project. HERESY IN MODENA Lodovico Castelvetro was born in Modena in 1505 to a prominent local family.12 Encouraged by his father to study law, Castelvetro attended the most celebrated institutions in Italy, at Bologna, Ferrara and Padua, before taking a degree in law at the University of Siena. Like many lawyers of his generation, including Calvin, Castelvetro’s legal education afforded him an introduction to humanism and its attendant intellectual resources. In Siena, he cavorted with Alessandro Piccolomini, Bernardino Maffei, and other humanist illuminati of the Accademia Grande (the society which later became the Accademia degli Intronati) discussing exciting developments in philosophy, classical languages, rhetoric, and Italian vernacular poetry, including the work of Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio, and Ariosto.13 Degree in hand, Castelvetro was bound for Rome and a promising diplomatic career in the service of his influential uncle Giovanni Maria Della Porta. But Castelvetro found life in 11  Exemplary studies by Stefano Jossa, Guido Mongini, and Claudia Rossignoli draw attention to the connections between Castelvetro’s oeuvre and his Reformation experiments. See Jossa [2014], 77–103; Mongini [2011]; and Rossignoli [2013], 317–39. 12  Marchetti and Patrizi [1979], 8–21. 13  On the early Italian academies as well as later developments see Yates [1983], 6–29.

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Rome “repulsive” and (by way of Siena) eventually returned to Modena, where he was appointed lecturer in law in 1532.14 Modena in the 1520s and 1530s was already an important center for humanist scholarship as well as religious dissent—indeed, “a laboratory of ideas in which the ingredients being tested were theological themes drawn from the larger European debate,” ranging from works by Erasmus and Melanchthon espousing the value of classical knowledge and humanist intellectual resources to anticlerical and exegetical works by Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, and a variety of nascent Italian reformers.15 In an important 1541 letter addressed to the Italians of Bologna and Modena, particularly to those “most zealous and desirous of the truth” [Italos veritatis studisissimos atque cupidissimos], Bucer celebrated recent developments in Italian reform but also exhorted his “beloved brethren” to use caution and eschew excessive disputation and curiosity “in order that we may live in Christ, and he in us,” counseling study and care regarding the sacraments and Scripture and in affairs of church government.16 In addition to Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Bucer, the Spiritualism of Juan de Valdés bore considerable influence on Italian readers. Valdesianism was not, strictly speaking, anticlerical or anti-Roman but rather emphasized justification by faith, foregrounding “the divine good work in forgiving and redeeming man,” the benefit of Christ [beneficio de Christo].17 Valdés’ works were read with great anticipation by a variety of Italian reformers, from radical Protestants like the itinerant preacher Bernardino Ochino to the moderate Spirituali, like Giovanni Morone, the Bishop of Modena, and Reginald Pole, both of whom advocated conciliar reform within the Church but never Reformation. But the influence of evangelical thought was so pervasive in Castelvetro’s Modena that even the moderate Morone, writing in 1540, could readily remark of his diocese, “In the shops they speak against purgatory, the mass, the power of the church, the invocation of the saints, and other articles, just as they do in Germany.”18 Among those discontents were the members of the Modenese Accademia, lettered men and women who gathered under the direction of Giovanni Grillenzoni, a physician and student of the philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi. Also included, among the Accademici, were: Francesco Porto, who taught Greek in Modena; the historian of Roman antiquity Carlo Sigonio; the lay preacher Fillippo Valentini; the cleric and anatomist Gabrielle Falloppio, best known to modernity for his diagrams of the reproductive organs; the young priest Giovanni Bertari; and, at its center, Ludovico Castelvetro.19 The Accademia promoted interest in classical languages, philology, history, rhetoric, and poetics; moreover, it hosted open discussions of contentious matters of faith and devotion. It also seemed to endorse some degree of lay preaching, and offered protection and support to a variety 14  Charlton [1913]; Marchetti and Patrizi [1979], 8–9. On the incomplete university in Modena, see Grendler [2002], 137. 15  Caponetto [1999], 254. 16  “Ex Epistola Mart. Buceri ad N.N. Italos veritatis studiosissimos atque cupidissimos” in Bucer [1577], 689–91. Caponetto discusses an important letter from Bucer (dated July 27, 1526) that circulated much earlier throughout Italy; see Caponetto [1999], 52–7. 17  Williams [2000], 822. 18  Church [1974], 38. 19  Williams [1965], 123.



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of heterodox figures, including Ochino and the controversial preacher Paolo Ricci Phileno (later known as Camillo Renato). Modena acquired a reputation for heterodoxy, so pervasive that Morone, in a July 1542 letter to the Venetian Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, wrote that “Preachers wished to come no more to this city on account of the persecution which the Accademici mete out to them, it being everywhere given out that this city is Lutheran.”20 Morone considered the members of the Accademia nothing less than “the sowers of heresy in the diocese.”21 Nevertheless, Morone “repeatedly counseled patience, charity, and humanity in dealing with those suspected of unorthodox views in general, and with members of the Academy in particular”—a strategy which says much about the widespread desire for reform, if not Reformation, in the years immediately preceding the Council of Trent and the foundation of the Roman Inquisition in 1542.22 As a papal diplomat, Morone spent many crucial years away from Modena during the late 1530s and early 1540s, attending colloquies in Germany between Lutherans and Catholics. The colloquies, ill-fated attempts to broker reform and reconciliation within the Holy Roman Empire by means of a general council, brought him into direct contact with Reformation stalwarts Bucer and Melanchthon as well as an emergent culture of German Protestantism.23 Contarini joined Morone as a papal legate in Regensburg [Ratisbone] in 1541, where Catholic and Lutheran factions failed to come to any agreement—here, on transubstantiation and matters of church government.24 By all accounts, both Morone and Contarini were reform-minded delegates, inclined to cooperate with Lutherans by conciliar process. Morone even endorsed the controversial Italian tract Il Beneficio di Cristo.25 But the misadventure at Regensburg seemed to confirm, for Morone, “the true intransigence of the Lutherans.”26 When Morone, recently elevated to the office of Cardinal, returned to Italy in May 1542, he faced like intransigence in Modena. In his absence, controversial works spread throughout the city and the region, calling for varying degrees of reform, inspired by Erasmus, Bucer, and Melanchthon. In 1537, for instance, the anonymous El Sommario della Sancta Scriptura circulated in Modena—a work attributed to the Accademia and burned at Rome on May 28, 1539—as well as an Italian translation of a catechism written by the Spiritualist Valdés.27 A variety of Lutheran, Spiritualist, and evangelical ideas circulated among the Modenese and, to Morone’s great dismay, even “many women and children have already soaked them up.”28 Ochino preached Lenten sermons on February 28, 1541, apparently to much acclaim; according to Grillenzoni, his “great brother” [grande frate] Ochino’s hypocritical Dominican opponents complained only because he “spoke 20  Morone [1757], 286; Brown [1933], 92–3 (translation modified). 21  Williams [1965], 127. 22  Gleason [1993], 285; and Firpo [2005], 55–129. 23  Indeed, Bucer’s letters tell us much about the projects of the colloquies—including his 1540 epistle An statui, addressed to Morone himself [episcopum . . . Mutinensem, nunciam apostolicum], among others. See Bucer [1995], 101–3. 24  Matheson [1972], 114–35; and Viallon [2005], 9–11, 123–45. 25  Prelowski [1965], 23. 26  Robinson [2012], 42. 27  Church [1974], 38–9; Firpo [2005], 79. 28  Caponetto [1999], 255.

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about Christ too much” [che troppo parlava di Christo] and because he preached without papal authority in the city.29 But the Modenese took to his style and message—hardly a surprise to the Inquisitor Thomas da Morbino who, in a 1540 report, could testify with some certainty that “‘the greater part of the citizens and noble and learned men’ of the city were sympathetic to false doctrine.”30 Some immediate efforts were made to curb the spread of heterodox influence.31 Increasingly, Roman and Modenese officials took pains to distinguish degrees of religious dissent, marking the differences between the Accademici, for instance, attracted as they were to nascent elements of Spiritualism-cum-Protestantism, and the more acute heresies of Phileno, approaching Anabaptism.32 Thus Morone’s attitude towards the Accademici, upon his return, was hardly severe. He negotiated with them, urging them to sign a confession of faith attesting their orthodoxy, albeit “one purified of scholastic verbiage that emphasized the fundamental principle of faith in Jesus Christ,” avoiding “the gratuitousness of salvation,” and eschewing precise treatment of “the soteriological role of works” for a more vague ecumenical accent on Christ’s Passion.33 In drafting the articles of the confession, Morone called upon Contarini and Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto for assistance. Sadoleto, who had already written several significant pamphlets and, in 1539, entreated Calvin and the Genevans to return to the fold in his famous Epistola ad Senatum Populemque Genevensem, corresponded directly with Castelvetro.34 In other words, Castelvetro was called upon to speak on behalf of the Accademici. In a June 1542 letter addressed to Castelvetro and his associates [compagni], Sadoleto revealed that Pope Paul III had heard a “sinister report” [sinistra relazione] of the Modenese Accademici the preceding day; Sadoleto recounts his displeasure [dispiacere], hoping that word of the Modenese heresies would not spread to all of the Consistory before he and Morone could advise the Pope discreetly, to resolve the situation without papal intervention.35 Sadoleto addresses Castelvetro and his fellow Accademici out of “love, patria, friendship, and the firm opinion that they are good men,” all the while finding it “very difficult to believe that anyone among them should be stained by any opinion unworthy of men of letters and true Christians” [molto difficile a credere, che tra voi sia alcuno macchiato di qualche opinione indegna d’uomini letterati, e veri Christiani].36 He urges Castelvetro to consider the future, and, “if some wish to persevere in their fantasies, to separate them from your company and conversation, always remaining men of balanced and inerrant judgment [continuando voi sempre di essere uomini 29  Firpo [2005], 64–5; “Copia d’una lettera di Ms. Giovanni Grillenzoni di 3 di Luglio al Card. Sadoleto da Modena” in Dittrich [1881], 394. 30  Douglas [1959], 164. 31  For instance, Paolo Ricci Phileno, labeled “a very seditious person” as well as a “knave” [ribaldo], was tried for heresy by Dominican inquisitors in Modena in late 1541; even after recanting, he remained in prison until his escape in 1542. Williams [1965], 127, 129. 32  Caponetto [1999], 256. Guido Mongini delivers a careful outline of Renato’s heresies as well as their impact in Modena in Mongini [2017], 476–81. 33  Caponetto [1999], 255–6. 34  See Letters 397 and 398 in Sadoleto [1764], 317–21; Calvin [1866]; and [1966]. 35  Sadoleto [1764], 317–18. 36  Sadoleto [1764], 318.



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saldi e non mobili], and truly Catholic, as I hope in God you will.”37 Castelvetro replied and Sadoleto presented his letter to the Consistory on July 15, which “His Blessedness” Pope Paul III heard “with great satisfaction and pleasure.”38 In his response, Castelvetro affirmed to Sadoleto that he “did not harbor any opinion unworthy of a true Christian,” and that he rejected those “new opinions” of which he was suspected.39 Where Sadoleto demonstrates a calculated and magnanimous patience in his letter, Castelvetro’s is an equally elegant, deferential response. Sadoleto recounts a “sinister report” [sinistra relazione] which had reached the Pope, and, in response, Castelvetro marveled, humbly, that any report of him might reach the Pope, from right [destra] or left [sinistra]! He professed his innocence and, with Grillenzoni, claimed that the Modenese Accademia was merely an association convened for the study of Greek and Latin, with only “minimal discussion” [minima parola] of Scripture, to say nothing of faith or devotional practice.40 The “sinister relation,” and the accusations against the Accademia originated among those “otiose, ignorant, hypocritical men” given to superstition and scholasticism.41 Overwhelmingly, Castelvetro and Grillenzoni emphasize the degree to which local discontents challenged the Accademia’s commitments to humanist education and the spread of intellectual resources. Here, in response to Sadoleto, the leading Accademici defend their Erasmian ambitions, misunderstood by pernicious Modenese “malefactors.” Later, in his Poetica, completed in exile, Castelvetro recalls the exchange with Sadoleto and attacks the late Cardinal’s comportment to Latinity. Castelvetro, citing Origen, censures “the Christian who desires to be known as a Christian” but who nevertheless “utter[s] without scandal such ancient and pagan oaths and supplications as hercle, mehercules, medius fidius, per deos immortals, si diis placet, and the like”—profane ornaments and Ciceronian fetishes that populate the work of “Sadoleto, and others, [who traffic in such epithets] out of a desire to be known as upholders no less of the glory of the Latin tongue than the purity of the Christian faith.”42 In the 1570 work Castelvetro condemns Sadoleto for his anachronistic elegance, his adherence to Ciceronian Latin. In his 1542 reply to Sadoleto, Castelvetro asserts his catholic faith and defends the scholarly ambit of the Accademia. But the scholarly world of the Accademici was inextricable from the projects of interpretation and reformation promoted by Erasmus and Melanchthon. After a few tense exchanges over the contents of the Confessio fidei, most of the Accademici, including Castelvetro, subscribed to the articles by September 1542. At this point, Morone, Sadoleto, and company managed to suppress the heterodox activities in Modena without the intervention of the reconstituted Roman Inquisition. Castelvetro could affirm, with good conscience, that the work of the Accademia was primarily scholarly and not, strictly speaking, doctrinal. Instead of offering extensive commentaries and interpretations, the Accademia afforded 37  Sadoleto [1764], 318–19. 38  Sadoleto [1764], 319. 39  “Copia di una lettera di Ms. Lud. Castelvetro al Card. Sadoleto di 2 di Luglio dalla Villa 1542 [Cod. Arch. Vat. 287 f. 218]” in Dittrich [1881], 390–1. 40  Dittrich [1881], 393. 41  Dittrich [1881], 394. 42  LC, 294 (translation modified); CP, II.264.

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participants propaedeutic resources to approach Scripture with new eyes—a fundamentally Melanchthonian project outlined across the Reformer’s pedagogical writing: So many times the Scriptures themselves recommend to us the ministry of the word, and they admonish us never to see the will of God unless in these writings. It is therefore easy to understand how necessary it is to grasp perfectly the nature of discourse, which nobody can achieve without a knowledge of languages or without the practice of eloquence.43

Castelvetro was instrumental in the Italian reception of Melanchthon, to say nothing of his prominence among the Accademici of Modena. His was the first Italian translation of Melanchthon’s 1521 Loci Communes Theologici, printed by Paolo Manuzio some time between 1530 and 1534, a work that circulated openly, even in Rome, under the title I Principii de la Theologia di Ippofilo da Terra Negra.44 Melanchthon’s German surname Schwartzerdt—literally, “Black Earth”—rendered in Italian: Ippofilo da Terra Negra.45 Castelvetro’s translation hid in plain sight. Moreover, Castelvetro’s library included foundational works of Protestant humanism, inspired by Erasmus, intended to facilitate the study of Scripture in the original language: Sebastian Münster’s Evangelium Secundum Matheum in Lingua Hebraica (1537), Conrad Pellican’s exhaustive Commentaria Bibliorum (1536), Martin Bucer’s Metaphrases on the Gospels (1536) and the Pauline Epistles (1536), and Johannes Oecolampadius’ commentaries on Daniel, for instance.46 But Castelvetro also obtained formative editions of key polemical works, from Calvin’s Institutio Christianae Religionis (Strasbourg, 1545) to various works by Luther. Melanchthon’s Loci Communes served both as a guide to Scripture and as a commentary on devotional practices. Castelvetro’s translation—“clear, logical, and elegant,” according to Salvatore Caponetto—emphasized the importance of diligent study of Scripture as well as justification by faith; given the fact that “the few books by Luther translated into Italian presented him as a theologian of fervent Christocentric piety, but did not reveal the great polemicist, the destroyer of the hierarchical and sacramental edifice of the Church of Rome,” it was Castelvetro’s translation of Melanchthon that framed Lutheranism—and Protestantism at large—as a scholarly movement focused on humanistic study rather than polemic and politics, continuous with earlier Erasmian projects and preoccupations.47 Castelvetro presented Melanchthon’s Lutheranism to Italian audiences in its earliest systematic form, as a series of Loci Communes arranged logically in an elegant Italian.48 Castelvetro translated a second work by Melanchthon, De Ecclesiae Auctoritate et de Veterum Scriptis Libellus (1539).49 His translation survives only in a manuscript in the Vatican Library, titled A Translation by a Dangerous Heretic/A Little 43  Melanchthon, “On the Study of Languages (1533)” [1999], 30; “De studio linguarum” [1843], 232. 44  Caponetto [1999], 22–3. 45  Caponetto [2000], 16; [1986], 253–74. 46  Brown [1933], 96–7. 47  Caponetto [1999], 23. 48  Caponetto [2000], 42; Melanchthon [1969]. 49  Perocco [1979], 541–7. Also, Melanchthon’s work circulated under an alternate title in later editions: De ecclesia et de autoritate verbi Dei. See Melanchthon [1951], 323–86.



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Book by Philipp Melanchthon concerning the Authority of the Church and the Writing of the Ancients, in the Vernacular [Traduzione di un grande Heretico/Libricciuolo di Phi. M. Dell’ Autorita della Chiesa et Degli Scritti Degli Antichi Uolgarizzato].50 De Ecclesiae is a signal work. Indeed, as Ralph Keen claims, “Few texts of the [early] Reformation period state so clearly the principles according to which the Fathers and the councils of the church may be considered authentic sources for Christian doctrine.”51 Melanchthon attempts to collate Patristic sources and, employing rhetorical and dialectical terms, to sketch, however tentatively, a history of the true, universal Church. The short work also identifies fundamental problems of interpretation, challenges for exegesis. According to Melanchthon, “even if we hold fast to the rule so as to embrace the word of God, nevertheless when ambiguous passages are perceived to occur in the Apostolic writings, some consider it better to follow the opinions of the Church than the writings of the apostles.”52 Almost immediately, Melanchthon casts suspicion on the authority of synods, councils, and edicts to determine doctrine, a move that might have struck Castelvetro and his fellow Accademici as prescient after the events of 1542, on the eve of the Council of Trent. Castelvetro’s translation of this “noble little book” [nobil libricciuolo] is a critical edition, even in manuscript, with Italian glosses explaining Greek vocabulary and references. This is especially true of rhetorical terms, and Castelvetro’s translations reflect a unique preoccupation with Erasmian exegesis. It is hardly incidental, for instance, that Castelvetro glosses the Greek λόγος with “cioè parola,” as the Italian “parola” follows Erasmus’ storied emendation of the beginning of the Latin Gospel of John, his substitution of sermo for the Vulgate’s verbum.53 As Melanchthon recounts the systematic corruption of the primitive Church, he also affirms the truth, from Scripture, of justification by faith.54 And Castelvetro, a good Melanchthonian reader, attends to the rhetorical figures at work in the text, defining allegoria, metonymia, and apostrophe in an effort to explain how Scripture licensed the exegetical practices and institutions of the early Church and how they were subsequently misinterpreted and degraded.55 Castelvetro’s translation reveals much about the discussions of Italian and antique letters at the Accademia and attends to Melanchthon’s Reformed approach to Scripture, urging “pious readers to first consider how the origins of doctrine [genera doctrinae] are set forth simply and without sophistry in the judgment [sententiam] of the Prophetic and Apostolic corpus of writing,” a body of work that informs the Church Fathers and is more consistent and authoritative than their Pontifical interpreters.56 Castelvetro’s marginal annotations also relate directly to his later commentary on Aristotelian tragedy. In a reference to the papacy, he defines the Greek term Ἀναμάρτητοι—“that is to say, infallible, a person that is 50  Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS Vat. lat. 7755. The manuscript contains two separate versions, or volumes, of the work. They are virtually the same, although in a different hand (or, if the same hand, the latter is much more orderly), and organized in such a way as to give the appearance of a book; the latter is most likely a presentation copy, wrought from the earlier “draft.” 51  Keen [1996], 1. 52  MEcc, Avr. 53  MEcc, B6v; Vat. lat. 7755; Boyle [1977], 3–31. 54  MEcc, C6v. 55  MEcc, C7v, D3v, D6r; Vat. lat. 7755. 56  MEcc, E5r.

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not able to err” [cioè infallibili, et persona che non potessero errare]—which is bound etymologically to Aristotelian ἁμαρτία (1453a.14–16); moreover, in his translation of καθάρματα, those who “show absolutely no desire to avoid religious conflicts or to praise peace and harmony,” those advocates of the Philosophia Pontificum whom we “esteem pests of the human race to be taken away,” Castelvetro looks forward to the related term κάθαρσις in the Poetica.57 Many of Melanchthon’s statements themselves inform Castelvetro’s later treatment of Aristotle. The severity of God’s law, for instance, produces “horrible fears and a feeling of God’s wrath and his curse” [horribilibus terroribus et sensu irae Dei et maledictionis]; opposed to this, however, is the recognition of God’s mercy, or pity [agnitione misericordiae].58 Suspended between God’s Law and God’s Grace, we also find ourselves between Aristotle’s tragic affects, fear and pity. Castelvetro’s translation is not merely an early engagement with Reformation history and theology. It also explores the broader implications of Melanchthonian method. Unfortunately for Castelvetro, his scholarly adventures, to say nothing of his theological commitments, were tantamount to heresy. C A S T E LV E T RO ’ S C O N D E M N AT I O N Castelvetro’s fate was, from the early 1540s on, tied to the fate of the Cardinal Morone, the prominent Modena Spirituali influenced by Erasmus and Valdés. Although Morone’s stature had risen under Pope Paul III across the 1540s, the moderate Cardinal’s activities drew the attention of the Roman Inquisition— particularly his relative tolerance of heterodoxy, his correspondence with the controversial poet Vittoria Colonna, his support for the divisive treatise the Beneficio di Christo as well as for key Valdesian preachers, and his own Spiritualist commitments and connections.59 Morone was investigated in secret across the 1550s and, on May 31, 1557, was arrested and imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo under authority of Pope Paul IV. Exhaustive records survive, giving the details of Morone’s prosecution as well as his defense. Among other crimes, Morone was accused of associating with Modenese heretics as well as being peculiarly lenient to the Modenese “Lutherans”; when witnesses were brought in to give their depositions, they were asked, in particular, whether and to what extent Ludovico Castelvetro contributed to the “seductione Moroni.”60 Inquisitors asked often about the “capi dell’Accademia lutherana”—that is, the heads of the Lutheran Accademia at Modena, among whom Castelvetro, described often as “haereticus,” figures prominently.61 Moreover, Inquisitors examined documents dating back to the early 1540s, including the ΚΑΤΉΧΗΣΙΣ Sive Christiana Instructio designed by Morone, Contarini, and Sadoleto and the attendant confession of faith bearing the signature, among 57 MEcc, F3v, G2v; Vat. lat. 7755. Castelvetro points interested readers to Guillaume Budé’s Annotationes in XXIV libros Pandectarum (1508): “Che ne desidera saper piu allargo legga Giuglielmo Budeo sopra le Pandette.” 58  MEcc, E4r. 59  See Robinson [2012], 59–96; Richardson [2009], 178–81. 60  Firpo and Marcatto [1984], 370, 373. 61  Firpo and Marcatto [1984], II.409, 384.



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others, “Ego Ludovicus Castelvetrus.”62 Inquisitors repeatedly asked about Morone’s relations with the notorious eterodossi modenesi from the 1530s to the late 1550s, with Castelvetro at the center of dissent.63 The case against Morone was based more on political factionalism than in sound evidence and, upon the death of Pope Paul IV, the charges were dismissed and Morone was soon released.64 His reputation redeemed, Morone would go on to serve an important role as “president” in the final year of the Council of Trent.65 Castelvetro, however, did not fare so well. During the 1540s, he remained a public figure, serving intermittently as a member of the Modena Conservatori, all the while maintaining his “Lutheranus habitus,” his “Lutheran disposition.”66 At first he seemed to thrive in Modena, despite the intensification of the Roman Inquisition. Censorship tightened, for instance, as the papacy issued an edict for Modena (as well as Rome, Ferrara, and Bologna), levying considerable fines and threatening excommunication for the “publishing, buying, selling, or permitting the entry of erroneous, heretical, scandalous, or seditious books”—that is, prohibiting any “books, tracts, pamphlets, letters, or any other works written or translated in any language, by heretics or by those suspected of heresy by His Holiness and the Holy See, or those convicted, condemned and prohibited by other Roman Pontiffs His predecessors, such as the recently printed Sermons of Bernardino Ochino of Siena.”67 This certainly included Castelvetro’s anonymous Italian translation of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, which appeared on the Roman Index in 1559.68 Castelvetro’s heterodoxy was subject to intense interest during the investigations of Morone. When Castelvetro entered into what might otherwise have been a minor literary dispute with the poet and scholar Annibal Caro in 1553, the quarrel quickly escalated once Caro invoked Castelvetro’s heterodoxy. Initially, Castelvetro censured Caro’s canzone “Venite all’ombra de’ gran gigli d’oro,” a poem written in honor of Caro’s employer, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, as well as the royal house of France.69 Castelvetro’s were technical critiques, drawing attention to Caro’s lack of philological and philosophical rigor; he accuses Caro of, among other things, a naïve and imprecise imitation of Petrarch as well as “great poverty of invention” [gran poverta à d’inventione] not befitting the true “spirits of poetry” [gli spiriti de la poesia].70 Caro and his apologists, in turn, named Castelvetro: A sophist (they say), a “fool-osopher,” a hypocrite, corrupter of the truth, of good manners and good letters: a furious, impious, enemy of God and men alike [who] 62  Firpo and Marcatto [1985], 190–221, 230. 63  Firpo and Marcatto [1989], 34–5. 64  Robinson [2012], 92–109. 65  O’Malley [2013], 205–47. 66  Marchetti and Patrizi [1979], 9. This is a description of Castelvetro dating to 1545. 67  Grendler [1977], 78; and “Das Edikt der römischen Inquisition vom. 12. Juli 1543” in Joseph Hilgers [1904], 484: “libris, tractatus, opuscula, epistolas, vel quaecunque alia scripta in quocunque idiomate composita sive translata haeretica vel de haeresi suspecta, per Sanctitatem Suam et Sedem Apostolicam aliosque Romanos Pontifices eius praedecessores damnatos, reprobatos et prohibitos, necnon sermones Bernardini Ochini de Senis noviter impressos.” 68  De Bujanda et al. [1990], 580. 69  Stefano Jossa’s brief account of this dispute is particularly illuminating. See Jossa [2014], 86–93; and Richardson [2009], 193–6. 70  Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma . . . [1558], 21, 15–22.

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dares to do these [irreligious] things. It means that all good men hold his doctrine, which is vain, false, and pestilent, to be so; it means that many men, who were and are otherwise worthy, were and are ignorant to side with him.71

The “perversity of his mind,” we learn, “clouds his vision.”72 Castelvetro is even mistaken in his rigor, missing the “spirit” of works like the Poetics and, in the process, treating Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and many other authorities as fools [balordi].73 More serious, however, are the religious implications of Castelvetro’s attack. His censure of Caro allegedly reveals his “passion, rage, and cruelty,” as Castelvetro condemns the canzone to death, without any semblance of commendation for its soul [senza che le facciate pur raccomandar l’anima]—a critical disrespect that, for Caro and company, evinces Castelvetro’s heretical denial of life beyond death [credeste di là da la morte], a heresy from the “house of the devil” [à casa del Diauolo] that allegedly appears in Castelvetro’s work.74 His heresies, together with his doctrine [dottrina] and manners [costumi], serve as a grave threat to Italian civilization, particularly to the youth for whom such injurious critical practices appear civil and sophisticated—to those faithful readers, one imagines, of Baldassare Castiglione and Giovanni della Casa.75 Due to some “contamination” in his own youth, Castelvetro had become feral and rabid, a dangerous heretic possessing “the nature of a dog” [natura di cane].76 While scholars debate the degree to which Caro’s allegations, or the allegations of the Accademia di Banchi di Roma, actually influenced Inquisition authorities, “the fact is that the machinations against Castelvetro and the other Accademici implicated in the affairs concerning religious dissent in Modena were organized directly from Rome.”77 Caro was a powerful adversary; given his position, as Farnese’s Secretary, and his friendship with a successive series of popes, he had “extensive inside knowledge of the political and ecclesiastical activities of the Roman curia at its highest levels.”78 Caro and the Accademici di Banchi di Roma, particularly in the 1558 Apologia, describe in passing the fact that Castelvetro is to be brought before the Roman Inquisition; after dispatching his critical arguments, they “leave [him] to his fury, to the Inquisitors, to the Captain of Sergeants, and to 71  Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma . . . [1558], 234: “un sofista (dicono) un filosofastro, uno spiritocco, corrompitore de la uerità, de la buona creanza, & de le buone lettere: un furioso, un empio, un nimico di Dio, & de gli huomini, ardisce di far queste cose? Vuol che la sua dottrina, la quale è uana, & falsa, & pestifera, sia da tutti tenuta per buona: uuol che tanti ualent huomini, che sono stati, & che sono, fossero, & siano tutti ignoranti à lato à lui.” See also Florio [2013]. Florio actually used the Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma to compile his dictionary! See Wyatt [2005], 323–4. 72  Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma . . . [1558], 89: “che la peruersità de l’animo, ui fa guercio de gli occhi.” 73  Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma . . . [1558], 26. 74  Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma . . . [1558], 145, 142–3. 75  Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma . . . [1558], 190–1. 76  Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma . . . [1558], 189. 77  Marchetti and Patrizi [1979], 9–10: “Il fatto è che la macchinazione contro il Castelvetro e gli altri accademici implicati nella vicenda del dissenso religioso modenese era stata organizzata direttamente a Roma.” Charlton places undue emphasis on Caro’s personal grudge in his brief hagiographical account; see Charlton [1913], 6–7. 78  Samuels [1974], 300.



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the great devil.”79 The argument against Castelvetro serves as both an accusation as well as evidence of an ongoing investigation and mounting suspicion of his heterodoxy. Caro and company also accused Castelvetro of the murder of Alberico Longo in 1555, a crime for which Castelvetro was tried in absentia; he was sentenced to death, and the confiscation of his property, before the Modenese Conservatorio (on which Castelvetro had served) intervened on his behalf, defending Castelvetro and protesting papal intervention in local affairs. But insofar as Castelvetro, tied to Morone and to Modenese heterodox circles, was subject to investigation, so were most of his advocates among the Modenese Spirituali—for instance, Egidio Foscarari, Bishop of Modena, who had Castelvetro compile a brief statement on the Mass in an attempt to placate the Inquisitors.80 An increasingly desperate Castelvetro sought refuge in Ferrara before Foscarari convinced him to prove his innocence at Rome. Even then, however, Castelvetro’s 1560 tenure in Rome was brief, as he fled to avoid interrogation by inquisitors (which would have involved torture). Inquisitors evidently planned to raise anew the question of his ­anonymous translations of Melanchthon, and he faced “a grave condemnation as a popularizer of Protestant doctrine” [una grave condanna come divulgatore della dottrina protestante].81 Castelvetro was thus condemned as a “fugitive and impenitent heretic” [eretico fuggitivo e impenitente] on November 26, 1560 and burned in effigy in the streets of Rome.82 Castelvetro spent the rest of his life in exile, between Chiavenna, Lyons, Geneva, and Vienna, before dying in Chiavenna, en route to Basel, in 1571. It was during these late years in exile that he prepared his Poetica for publication. T H E H E T E RO D OX Y O F T H E P O E T I C A The Poetica was first printed by Gaspar Stainhofer in Vienna in 1570. In addition to a growing body of work on poetics, Castelvetro had spent ample time studying humanist and Protestant approaches to biblical exegesis in the preceding forty years. He had translated Melanchthon and was quite familiar with an emergent archive of Protestant and Spiritualist writing which, in turn, furnished him with exemplary material for his Poetica. He cites, for instance, Tale XXX from Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron (1558), George Buchanan’s tragedy Iephthes, sive Votum (1554), and Bucer’s annotated translation of the Psalms, the Sacrorum Psalmorum Libri Quinque (1529).83 This material bears real influence on the Poetica, beyond mere reference, in ways that few scholars have noted. Explicit references to Bucer, for instance, were removed from the 1576 edition of the Poetica. As Bucer’s edition of the Psalms initially circulated under a different name, Castelvetro alleges that it 79  Apologia de Gli Academici di Banchi di Roma . . . [1558], 236. See also the language of the fourth sonnet in the “Corona,” 238. 80  Caponetto [1999], 309–10; Pastore [1998]. 81  Marchetti and Patrizi [1979], 11. 82  Marchetti and Patrizi [1979], 11. 83  LC, 93, 171; CP, I.248–9, 426, 270–1; Hobbs [1984].

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garnered great praise in Rome before its true author was known.84 Bucer, he claims, was well aware that his work would be ill received in Rome. He nevertheless believed that his book would be “of the greatest spiritual benefit to anyone who would have read it, and he removed his name and surname and replaced them with Arezio Fellino.”85 Under this moniker, he might avoid censorship and the Inquisition. Bucer was “moved by love” [inducendosi per carità] to circulate the work under a pseudonym—which, Castelvetro emphasizes, was not a false name but rather a translation, a version of his own name, in Greek and Latin, and thus not deceitful—thus “opening the way for further benefit to others who, if they knew [his] name, would be otherwise shut.”86 In Castelvetro’s anecdote, Bucer disguises his name in an effort to foster concord, to contribute to the spiritual edification of a hostile people. This was evidently a scandalous reading, even in the 1570s, as these references to Bucer were methodically removed from subsequent posthumous editions of the Poetica. Yet this anecdote opens a discussion concerning names in tragedy as Castelvetro glosses Poetics 1451b.8–10, where Aristotle defines “universal” [καθόλου] as “the kinds of things which it suits a certain kind of person to say or do, in terms of probability or necessity: poetry aims for this, even though attaching names to the agents.”87 For Castelvetro Aristotle’s parenthetical qualification on poetic nomination is crucial. Names communicate much and Castelvetro is reluctant to cede nomination to the realm of particular or accidental things. Names reveal “accidental events concerning the birth of the name” [alcuno accidente avenuto intorno al nascimento del nomato]—for instance, the etymology of the name “Oedipus” lays bare the story of his abandonment—which are inextricable from plot.88 But in tragedy in particular, names also work metonymically to refer to universal things. Castelvetro draws our attention to the Lord, whom men call by the proper name “Jesus,” as a prime example wherein the name communicates more than the accidental qualities of his life but ultimately “his perpetual and proper office, which is the salvation of the elect” [per l’ufficio perpetuo e proprio suo, che è di salvare gli eletti].89 Here Castelvetro subtly condemns the mediation of the papacy in the process of salvation, the task of which is Christ’s alone. And his critique of the papacy is also sharp where Castelvetro tacitly censures the pope for privileging the custom [usanza] of changing the names of converts when they are baptized, obscuring the true meaning of the sacrament.90 The new name alone does not communicate the importance of the sacrament, or the universal process of salvation through grace, nor is it the pope or the clergy who effect the change in the convert. Critical references to the Papa di Roma were also scoured from the second edition of the Poetica. The details of the censorship are hazy. The second edition, printed in Basel in 1576, was allegedly “Revised and amended according to the original, and the author’s mind” [Riueduta, & ammendata secondo l’originale, & la mente dell’autore]; in other words, it claimed to offer a better representation of Castelvetro’s intended

84  Hobbs [1984], 478. 85  CP, I.270–1. 86  CP, I.270. 88  CP, I.264. 89  CP, I.265. 90  CP, I.265.

87  AP, 58–61.



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project.91 Many Greek citations and translations are indeed emended, perhaps based on Castelvetro’s own notes, perhaps fine-tuned by generous readers after his death, in the interest of clarity. But the pointed Reformation critiques are another matter. In his exhaustive anatomy of literary criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Bernard Weinberg assumed that the 1576 edition represented “Castelvetro’s final thinking on the text of Aristotle and on poetic theory,” operating under the belief that the posthumous text “was prepared by friends on the basis of the author’s manuscripts,” even though he admits that “Questions arise about the authenticity of the changes and which text to use as the basis for study.”92 In 1576 Castelvetro had been dead for nearly five years, and it is difficult to imagine that his friends and fellow travelers would so meticulously remove references to Reformation controversies based on the final wishes of a victim of the Inquisition who found refuge, among other places, in Calvin’s Geneva. A brief survey of Castelvetro’s late interlocutors exhorts us to take his Protestantism seriously—the work of his nephew Giacomo Castelvetro, for instance, or his collaboration with the Genevan Classicist Francesco Porto. Granted, it would be wrong to attribute to Castelvetro the fervor of a Calvin or a Beze; in fact, by some accounts Castelvetro’s “Nicodemism”—that is, his willingness to attend Catholic Masses and participate in other Catholic practices, anathema to true Christianity—is taken as evidence of his endorsement of traditional Catholic practices.93 But this is not the case. His Nicodemism in exile is, rather, continuous with his cautious Modenese habits as well as his firm commitments to Melanchthonian and Erasmian visions of unity. As Guido Mongini makes clear, Nicodemism was crucial to diverse Italian visions of ecclesiastical reformation, even to those who resisted Swiss or German attempts to establish Reformed churches.94 Moreover, the censored religious sections of the Poetica do not merely adorn the work, as polemical appendices to a principal commentary on form. On the contrary, Castelvetro’s heterodox suggestions are inextricable from his treatment of Aristotle. The reasons why the 1570 Poetica was censored may remain obscure but it is clear that, in retrieving the omitted sections, it becomes increasingly difficult to deny the Reformation provenance of Castelvetro’s commentary. However subtly, Castelvetro marshals Aristotle’s pointed formalism for a more enduring philosophical critique of Roman Catholic traditions, practices, and assumptions about divinity. This is the case, for instance, with Castelvetro’s comment on Poetics 1460b.35– 1461a.1, on Aristotle’s brief account of solutions relating to “religion” [οἷον τὰ περὶ θεῶν], the type of which “it is neither ideal nor true to say” [ἴσως γὰρ οὔτε βέλτιον οὕτω λέγειν οὔτ’ ἀληθῆ] but which people nevertheless profess according to religious belief. Castelvetro explores the terms by which Aristotle allows statements or representations in tragedy to be, strictly speaking, false [οὐκ ἀληθῆ/non son vere], such as when Sophocles claimed to create characters “as they ought to be” 91  Castelvetro [1576]. 92  Weinberg [1961], 503. 93  De Rinaldis [2003], 166–7. 94  For many, Nicodemism was part of a strategy involving “the consequential refusal to build, and even less to impose, strictly structured theological scaffolding to be taken on as the foundations of the religious community (the Church) and entrusted to some magisterial authority, institution, or pastoral hierarchy with coercive power.” Mongini [2017], 490.

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(a species of falsity, opposed to Euripides’ characters, represented “as they are”).95 The focus here, in Castelvetro’s commentary, is on how one might bring a tragedy to a successful conclusion via a satisfactory soluzione. And it would be wrong, Aristotle claims, to conclude that it is simply erroneous to make use of falsities, particularly in cases which involve the gods, “le cose degl’iddii”—not the true Christian religion but things relating to “religion” in the broadest anthropological sense. He emphasizes the importance of credibility as well as the historical and provisional status of belief, distinct from matters universal. Castelvetro is careful to note that what arise here are cases of what he calls poetic anachronism [ἁναχρονισμόν/­ trastemporaneamento], the point being to investigate the degree to which antique religious statements work in plots without necessarily being true.96 This raises a perspectival problem in the Poetica, enabling Castelvetro to mark a distinction between the poet’s true comprehension of nature and the readers’ expectations: “imitations of things as they ought to be may represent their objects as both the poet and the reader [al poeta e al lettore] believe they ought to be, or as they ought to be in the opinion of the poet and not the reader, or of the reader and not the poet.” 97 Castelvetro points to an issue of anachronism, demonstrating how “modern” readers might consider the pagan religions they encounter in antique tragedies as false while, at the same time, conceding that aspects of these religions determine the plot. The challenge, for the reader, is a rhetorical one, to discover the poet’s intention, as well as the world of the poet, in the poem. In other words, it is not enough to declare that anachronistic things are false, or to accept such opinions as true. The antique tragedies focus our attention on belief and investigate how belief works within plots, even when such beliefs cannot be verified. Castelvetro even suggests that “le religioni” is a “quasi perpetue” thing—that is, that visible aspects of religion such as ceremonies, figures, and devotional practices are only “quasi-permanent,” subject to change and anachronism.98 While it might be the task of the poet to understand the universal aspects of religion, the unchanging principles and truths subtending the “quasi-permanent” formations, the poet might also use credible and accepted elements to accommodate these principles to diverse readers. In other words, Castelvetro emphasizes the gap between poetic design and the expectations of diverse audiences. Thus critics must adjudicate carefully among quasi-permanent, historical, or provisional solutions, to understand how and why poets might stray from universal truths into the realm of falsity (however appropriate to a plot). Here Castelvetro moves forward from antiquity to differences in perception among contemporaries. His Reformation example is striking: it did not accord with Boccaccio’s conception of what ought to be that in describing the pitiful sufferings of the stricken during the plague that raged shortly before he wrote the Decameron he should have omitted all mention of the fact that some victims died without having their confessions heard or receiving holy communion or extreme unction [senza avere udisse le loro confessioni o chi gli communicasse o desse loro l’estrema unzione]; yet to some readers of the present time Boccaccio’s silence would accord with 95  AP, 128–9; CP, II.257–9. 98  LC, 275; CP, II.219.

96  CP, II.257–9.

97  LC, 299; CP, II.276.



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what ought to be, for recent years have seen the emergence of the doctrine that religious rites of any sort are unnecessary at death, and those readers would not believe that the omission of them is a deprivation of the kind to provoke pity [non le reputando ate a muovere compassione per l’opinione supravenuta che non sieno cose necessarie in simili casi].99

By Castelvetro’s account, Boccaccio affirmed a steadfast belief in the efficacy of the sacraments, not only the Eucharist but also extreme unction and auricular confession. Castelvetro followed the early Reformers in rejecting extreme unction and auricular confession outright, and in transforming Communion beyond recognition. Elsewhere in the Poetica itself, for instance, Castelvetro considers “things [that] are considered impossible not only to men but also to God,” among which he mentions how, “according to some it is impossible for a natural body, which has its proportions, length, breadth, and depth [un corpo natural, che ha le sue misure, lunghezza, larghezza e profondità], to be in more than one place at the same time.”100 Castelvetro refuses to let this remain ambiguous, and continues, “The latter proposition has been the subject of bitter controversy in our day, the occasion being the doubts that have been cast on the real presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist [per cagione della disputa della presenza del corpo del nostro Signore nella Cena]”—a parenthetical which was removed from the 1576 edition of the Poetica.101 Returning to the passage on Boccaccio, Castelvetro speaks here on behalf of “some readers of the present time” for whom the sacramental details do not “provoke pity.” Boccaccio’s approach to the sacraments is bound to history as Castelvetro subtly classifies the trappings of medieval Catholicism together with “le cose degl’iddii” of antiquity, with “things related to the gods,” with devotional forms and assumptions that are not true but which nevertheless serve key functions in familiar fabulae. Reluctant to condemn Boccaccio’s work, Castelvetro judges his depiction of the sacraments licit insofar as it is historical and, in Boccaccio’s day, credible. But make no mistake: Castelvetro undermines traditional religion and troubles the terms of credibility and belief. He reveals practices and habits that were evidently crucial to fourteenth-century Christianity as contingent cultic elements of an otherwise universal religion. The true poet, as well as the effective critic, must comprehend the latter. This entire excursus on Boccaccio was subsequently removed in posthumous editions of the Poetica. Some notions, however, are unfit for accommodation, unsuitable in any age. Such is the case, Castelvetro implies, with Dante’s account of papal supremacy. In line with Melanchthon’s De Ecclesiae (to say nothing of Bucer, Luther, and the most predominant Italian reformers and Reformers alike), Castelvetro’s initial 1570 edition is duly critical of papal authority. In a treatment of accommodation that qualifies Aristotle’s notion that “poetry does not have the same standard of correctness [ὀρθότης] as politics, or as any other art” [Poetics 1460b.12–14], Castelvetro turns to Dante to illustrate how, assuming that: the Roman Empire had been the proximate cause [cagione prossima] of the Pope’s glorious dominion over the world, Dante has it that God (who, as he thought, took 99  LC, 299; CP, II.276. 101  LC, 287; CP, II.249.

100  LC, 287; CP, II.249. I alter the translation here.

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joy and satisfaction in the Pope’s grandeur and exaltation) permitted the liberties of Republican Rome to be stifled by the Emperor so that the sum of those augmented powers might be more expeditiously transmitted to the Pope, as though God relaxed his strict justice somewhat, in order that he receive greater glory proceeding from an exalted Papacy.102

Dante’s assumption concerning God’s enjoyment is a dangerous one, and Castelvetro proceeds surreptitiously to undermine the papacy by suggesting that such authority rests on the suggestion that God might relax or bend his most severe judgment [quasi piegandosi alquanto dalla sua severa giustizia] for the sake of the pope, as if the exaltation of the pope might reflect back on God and serve to glorify him.103 The entire parenthetical expression—“who, as he thought, took joy and satisfaction in the Pope’s grandeur and exaltation”—was removed from the 1576 edition. Moreover, the posthumous edition omitted the next sentence as well, where Castelvetro pushed the condemnation of papal authority further yet: “Dante could not bring himself to believe that the Commons could without external constraint have brought itself so to despise its liberties as to willingly make itself servant to a priest” [non si potendo fare a credere che il Commune di spontanea volontà si fosse mai indotto a sprezzare tanto la libertà che si fosse fatto servo d’un pretto].104 For Dante, the transformation of Rome into an empire prepared the Roman ­people for the papacy, a speculative historical thesis that omits any reference to the primitive Church, to the authority of Scripture and the Church Fathers that Castelvetro, translator of Melanchthon’s De Ecclesia, knew so well. Moreover, Dante’s fundamental anthropomorphic misunderstanding of God’s will subtends his erroneous theses on papal authority, a misunderstanding of accommodation as well as God’s justice. The removal of these clauses in the 1576 Poetica blunts both the theological and the formal force of Castelvetro’s critique. It also obscures an important interlocutor, more contemporary than Dante’s Inferno—namely, the Italian Reformer and poet Francesco Negri, the author of the immensely popular Tragedia del Libero Arbitrio (1546), which I introduced in Chapter 1. According to his early English translator Henry Cheke, Negri sets forth, “in manner of a Tragedie, the deuylishe devise of the Popishe religion, which pretendeth holynesse onely for gayne, and treadeth Christe vnder foote, to set up wicked Mammon.”105 Across five acts Negri satirizes the illegitimate pope and the equally illegitimate King Freewill who persecutes and oppresses true Christians (Lutherans, so-called “heretics” in Rome, even Wycliffites) through violence, custom, and misinformation. No less an authority than the Apostle Paul describes Freewill’s false authority as contrived, fabulous: in the same case that kings stand in tragedies rehearsed upon a stage: for many times the poorest & vilest man, appeareth there in the apparel and fourme of a kyng, and seemeth to haue great power & many seignories, but in deede al is but a feigned & 102  LC, 274; CP, II.217. I alter the translation here. 103  LC, 274; CP, II.217. I alter the translation here. 104  LC, 274; CP, II.217. I alter the translation here. 105  See Freewyl; Negri [1559]; and Caponetto [1999], 34–5.



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fabulous thing: Imagine therefore . . . that this world is a stage, where the deuyl wil set forth a fable of a certayne kingdome, which he called [the] kingdome of good workes, & suppose that he which in this fable appeareth in the apparel and person of king Freewyl, is a faigned and counterfayte person, seemyng and not beyng, as all the rest of his familie be, and all other thynges in his kyngdome. And albeit Jeremie the Prophete to shewe this nullitie, doth say unto God, I knowe Lord, that the ways of man are not in his power, neyther can he direct his feete at his pleasure. And Jesus Christe also affirmeth, that no man can do any thyng without hym, & I lykewyse wrytyng to the Philippians [Phil. 2], doo geve them to understande, as the mouth of Christe, that God doth worke in every man both to wyl and to do, accordyng to his good pleasure, and also to the Corinth. [1 Cor. 12] that God doth worke all in all thynges: yet this maskyng king puft up with pride, doth goe about sometimes to proue, contrary to the sentences here alleaged, some essence of hym selfe, & of his estate, by the aucthoritie of the devine scriptures, and also by other meanes. But in the ende his ignorance is layde open before his eyes in suche sort, as he knoweth not any more what to say.106

At stake here in the Tragedia, as well as in Castelvetro’s reference, is a treatment of God’s will, the extent to which God might permit the ascendancy of the papacy as well as this abstraction “free will” for his own greater glory. Dante’s mistake, according to Castelvetro, is to assume knowledge of God’s will and pleasure and to suggest that God, in relaxing his “strict justice,” works through political corruption and subjugation. Negri’s virtue, in turn, is to subject God’s will and pleasure to a more rigorous treatment in a tragedy. Tragedy, formally, is able to lay bare the connections and assumptions subtending the stage king’s false authority. It exposes to the actor, “before his eyes” in recognition, as well as to the audience the futility of his claim. Moreover, Negri exploits the resources of poetics (if not the Poetics itself ) and dramatic form to think critically about the dangers of personation, direct and indirect speech, and accommodation. In the Tragedia, it is again the Apostle Paul who, rehearsing the words of “a ryght christian, as simple and whyte as a lilie,” describes how: the holy scripture in some places doth speake properly, and in other places improperly, and yet in al places truely. The proper speech of scripture, (to geve you some example for the better understandyng) is when it sayth, God is a spirite, because he is so of his owne nature [ John 4]. Improper speach, when it geveth hym a body, members, and the use of them, resemblyng him to a man, as we see it doth in divers places [Joel 3]. Proper speache, when it sayth that the Lorde God is unchangeable, for he is so of his owne nature [Rom. 11]. Improper, when it maketh shewe that he is chaungeable, as when it sayth, he repented that he had made man [Gen. 6]: and in another place, he repented that he made Saul kyng [1 Kings 15]. Proper speache, when it sayeth that God is in every place, for so it is convenient for his nature, for the conservation of all thynges whiche he hath created, although he be also particulerly in the hartes of the faythful, for the special effect of theyr sanctification. Improper, when it sayeth, that he went downe to see the towre of Babel.107

106  Freewyl, 131–2.

107  Freewyl, 155, 157–8.

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Improper speeches “are not contrary to those which be proper, nor false of themselues, but moste true.”108 What marks improper speech as distinct from proper speech then, is a matter of accommodation: it hath so pleased the eternal father to applye his deuine speaches to our intelligence and capacitie, because we also shoulde acknowledge his infinite goodnesse in this poynt, and geue hym thankes for the same, who doth not disdayne to speake moste basely of hym selfe and of his doyngs, because he seeth our nature unable otherwyse to comprehende him.109

Dante’s mistake, Castelvetro suggests, is to ascribe to God qualities and desires in ways that are not licensed by Scripture. Moreover, Dante does not account for why the Roman people—or any people—would cede their freedom “without external constraint,” in this case to an emperor or a pope. Dante’s solution concerning power and authority not only lacks rigor, it also lacks credibility. Castelvetro’s Poetica addresses this in detail, between his treatment of accommodation and his central claims about poetry’s rhetorical and dialectical capacities. In these censored passages, the stakes of Castelvetro’s project become clearer. He approaches incendiary Reformation controversies formally, if obliquely, by way of poetry. The polemical force of the Poetica rests on a thorough treatment of poetics—in particular, of tragedy and its philosophical, theological, and, indeed, literary capacities. TRAGIC FORM IN THE POETICA Poetry, for Castelvetro, is foremost a matter of invention and rational exercise, an arduous practice reserved “properly for persons of superior intellectual capacities and not, as some have said, for madmen [furiosa].”110 Dispatching Neoplatonic approaches to poetry that attribute poetic genius to divine inspiration, fury, or madness, Castelvetro repeatedly draws attention to technique and difficulty. He even challenges Aristotle’s speculative anthropological claims about the origins of poetry at Poetics 1449a.8–14, finding it “difficult to believe . . . that the first poetry was spontaneous or unpremeditated, for nothing can be produced spontaneously but by those who have had long practice of the necessary art and have formed the habit of it.”111 Although Castelvetro ostensibly corrects Aristotle here, he also follows Aristotle closely insofar as he defines poetry in terms of mimesis—in Castelvetro’s Italian, la rassomiglianza—rather than meter. This is most clear in the distinction between poetry and history. Historians do not “invent” the matter of history; it is given “by the course of earthly events or by the manifest or hidden will of God.”112 History is a record of events that have happened, and the historian need not exercise what Castelvetro calls “invention and imagination through the labor of poetic genius” [materia trovata e imaginata . . . per l’opera dello ’ngegno del poeta].113 Poetry, however, depends entirely on invention, as well as on “language 108  Freewyl, 157–8, 160. 111  LC, 42; CP, I.95–6.

109  Freewyl, 157–8, 160. 110  LC, 40; CP, I.486. 112  LC, 18; CP, I.44. 113  LC, 18; CP, I.44.



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that is not that of ordinary discourse”; in contrast to things that have happened, poets invent: things that may happen and have never happened, which form the matter of poetry, [which] cannot be brought into being without the strenuous exercise of the intellect and great discernment, for the poet must not only invent and understand what has never happened and yet may happen to particular persons in accordance with the requirements of verisimilitude or necessity, but must also arrange the parts of his invention in the proper order.114

The historian describes things that have happened, in ordinary language. The poet invents possible actions or events that have never happened and expresses them in ways that are not ordinary (for instance, in verse). Castelvetro polices this distinction carefully, making sure the poet never strays too far from the forms of possibility and credibility proper to history, matters “no less delightful or less probable than one produced by the course of human events or the infinite providence, hidden or manifest, of God.”115 There is a Melanchthonian injunction at work here, in the Poetica, as Castelvetro articulates powers of invention and novelty in poetic fabulae. His comments recall Melanchthon’s own 1526 oration De utilitate fabularum, where the Wittenberg Reformer describes how “words and the meanings of the arguments [verba tum sententiae eorum argumentorum] which we have heard with wonder remain rooted more deeply, and, so to speak, leave spines behind in the mind by which we are inflamed with a concern to investigate these things which are taught to us by the novel device [novo commento].”116 Melanchthon is referring here to “fable” in a stricter sense, to the Aesopian beast fable appropriate for children, but this short oration grounds his mature theses on accommodation and poetry. The success here of the fabula rests on invention and unfamiliarity. Building on this, Castelvetro shows how the poet produces an art that resembles history, but not too closely, lest the poet be revealed as “a writer who had shirked the labor of invention and consequently had given no proof of the acuteness of genius that its invention would have required.”117 Castelvetro censures writers from Lucan to Giralomo Fracastoro (particularly his Latin biblical epic Ioseph), denying their writing “the glorious name of poetry” because they merely express, even in verse, actions that have already happened.118 Castelvetro’s criticism is harsh. For a poet like Fracastoro: the world will deny him all praise and indeed will heap blame upon him for having lacked the intelligence to recognize the proper object of poetic imitation and will dismiss him as a wretch and a deceiver who sought to win the undeserved commendation of all who heard or read him by duping them into accepting as poetry unpoetic matter inside a brightly colored shell of metrically ordered language.119 114  LC, 18, 97; CP, I.44, 255–6. 115  LC, 18–19; CP, I.44–5. 116  Melanchthon, “On the Usefulness of Fables (1526?)” [1999], 56; “De utilitate fabularum” [1843], 118. 117  LC, 18–19; CP, I.44–5. 118  LC, 18–19; CP, I.44–5. See also Fracastoro [2013], 87–165. 119  LC, 18–19; CP, I.44–5. See also LC, 96, 274–5; CP, I.254, II.217.

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In this crucial distinction between poetry and history, poetry emerges primarily as a matter of invention and, from the beginning of his Poetica, Castelvetro emphasizes the importance of necessity and probability to poetic invention. In this sense, poetry—and tragedy in particular—is an exercise in probability; the best poetry, unlike history, depicts things which have not happened but which could happen. This is most clear in the investigation of plot [favola] in tragedy, which Castelvetro defines as “the combination of the incidents that go into the making of a tragedy [constituzione delle cose] . . . its invention (the sum of things invented) or its subject [la ’nvenzione delle cose, o il soggetto].”120 Plot is nothing less than “the substance of tragedy [la sustanzia della tragedia], to which the other parts attach themselves as accidents [come accidenti], and as far as we know, the making of it was not reduced to an art before Aristotle, who set forth his conception of that process in the Poetics.”121 Thus Aristotle’s treatment of tragedy serves Castelvetro as a rigorous model approaching philosophy, importing terms from metaphysics to account for the precise faculties of tragic causality. Plot is foremost in Castelvetro’s treatment of Aristotle, just as Castelvetro extends Aristotle’s comments on plot in his discovery of the storied unity of action: “A plot, Aristotle asserts, may be said to have unity if it consists of a single action of a single person and not all the actions of one person’s life.”122 Insofar as Castelvetro endorses this Aristotelian dictum, located at Poetics 1451a.16–18, he makes it clear that the unity of action is actually irreducible to character and proceeds, rather, from dialectic. Castelvetro limits tragedy to one action because an action is already always a host of related causes and effects, tied to one another by necessity, matter enough for any tragedy: “those who believe that a plot may contain more than one action and still be unified will not accept his contention that there is one and only one way of fusing a number of actions into a unified plot, namely, by establishing a probable or necessary relationship among them”—that is, by establishing adequate causality.123 Tragedy is at best a philosophical object lesson in causality. The unity of action ensures this, in the plot. Castelvetro makes this very clear in his treatment of universality, as opposed to particularity. According to the Poetica, Aristotle defines “universals”—that is, τὰ καθόλου, or le cose universali—as any “incident known in summary form which may be said to possess the property of universality in so far as it may occur to many persons [la moltitudine delle persone]. Each part of such an incident may also be described as universal, but only insofar as it is possible for it to occur to many persons.”124 For Castelvetro, Aristotle’s definition of a “universal” rests, at least here, on its reception among a multitude of people, as well as its narrative dimensions. Not only must it happen to many people, it must also be communicated in language to many people “in summary” [uno accidente detto sommariamente]. Particular things are those which have happened to discrete people, particular ­people, and which defy the narrative impulses proper to poetry. For one to “know particularly” [sanno particolarmente] is in this sense to know “no more and no less than ‘what has happened’ [le cose avenute],” a faculty of history and not poetry, and 120  LC, 69; CP, I.195–6. 123  LC, 91; CP, I.243.

121  LC, 71; CP, I.203–4. 124  LC, 94; CP, I.250.

122  LC, 87; CP, I.233.



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certainly not tragedy.125 Even when a tragedian adapts the matter of history or tradition [fama], the task is to express particular elements “in summary and universalized form” [sommariamente e in universale], as “appropriate elements of the plot” [materia conveniente alla favola].126 Departing from the mode of commentary, Castelvetro proceeds to explore the “universal” in terms ultimately foreign to the Poetics: Let us imagine two vast fields, one of which may be called the field of certainty [certitudine], the other that of uncertainty [incertitudine]. The field of certainty is the field of history, that of uncertainty the field of poetry. But the field of certainty contains areas of uncertainty and that of uncertainty even greater areas of certainty. I call “field of certainty” what Aristotle calls “things that have happened” [le cose avenute] or “particular things” [le cose particolari], and “field of uncertainty” what he calls “things that may happen” [le cose possibili ad avenire] or “universal things” [le cose universali]. “Universal things” are so called because they may happen to everyone but have not yet happened to anyone. Because they have happened to no one and may happen to anyone, they are uncertain [incerte], and we do not know whether they are more likely to happen to one person than to another.127

Castelvetro distinguishes universals from particulars by degrees of certainty. The universal things proper to poetry, and especially to tragedy, are “uncertain” only because they are probable. To express a universal thing is to strip it of its particular elements, its accidents, to render it in summary terms. Universals are still possible, always possible. Where to be uncertain is to be possible, universal things are also uncertain. Castelvetro again imports terms from metaphysics for the sake of precision: “To our way of thinking ‘possibility’ [possibilità] is to be understood as the potency inherent in any action [potenzia nell’azzione] that meets with no impediment of any kind to its actualization.”128 And Castelvetro is careful to distinguish possibility from credibility [credibilità]—that is, “the probability thanks to which one can readily believe that the action of which it is a property was eventually actualized” [convenevolezza nell’azzione per la puale altri si può indurre a credere che quella azzione si sia condatta all’atto].129 Possibility and probability are substantive terms culled from dialectic. In a complementary way, credibility points to the subjective apprehension of plot, to verisimilitude, and the likelihood an audience might find a given depiction believable. Castelvetro brings this focus on possibility, credibility, and le cose universali to bear on his exegesis of plot in the Poetica—plot, la parte principale, the most important aspect of tragedy, if not poetry in general.130 Plot requires the greatest exercise of invention, as well as the sharpest attention to philosophical detail. Indeed, Castelvetro makes this clear: “The thought which Aristotle undertakes to expound is that species of invention which concerns itself not with the telling of a story [soggetto al parlare narratore], but with proving and disproving [soggetto al

125  LC, 94; CP, I.250–1. 126  LC, 95; CP, I.252, 253. 127  LC, 98; CP, I.279–80. I alter the translation here. 128  LC, 256; CP, II.187. 129  LC, 256; CP, II.187. 130  CP, I.418.

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parlare provatore].”131 This is the province of tragedy: demonstration and the exercise of inference. Thus the poet must take great care to craft plots that are credible.132 In the event that an improbability is unavoidable, “it should not be made an integral part of the plot or the spectacle [rappresentazione].”133 Castelvetro emphasizes how improbabilities [parte non ragionevole] are least tolerable when they are integral to the performance, to the staging of the event, to which I will soon turn.134 In the meantime, however, it is crucial that poets invent plots that are consistent and credible. All other aspects of tragedy are subordinate. By “including superfluous matter, excluding necessary matter, transposing some part or parts out of their proper order, introducing matter that undermines the plot’s effectiveness,” poets introduce “errors” [peccati] that undermine the consistency and probability of the plot.135 To make this point crystal clear Castelvetro even admonishes Aristotle. Insofar as he excuses “the invention of impossibilities” as something other than “an intrinsically poetic error,” Aristotle apparently contradicts himself: “For if a poem is by its very nature a representation of possibilities, it follows that the invention of impossibilities is fatal to the very substance of poetry [distrugga la sustanzia della poesia] and consequently that it is an error intrinsic to the art.”136 Castelvetro insists on the primacy of plot and the avoidance of improbabilities—elements of tragedy that elevate poetics to an appropriately exacting and rigorous field of study, after Aristotle. This is the properly Aristotelian province of the Poetica. Thus, faithful to Aristotle, Castelvetro affirms the primacy of plot. But Castelvetro quickly qualifies this in a peculiarly un-Aristotelian way, introducing an innovative distinction between how the plot works, internal to the tragedy, and how spectators experience this plot. In his detailed treatment of Poetics 6 Castelvetro establishes that “tragedy has two ends, one of which lies within its bounds and the other outside of them.”137 The former end, which lies within the bounds of tragedy, is “the happiness or unhappiness engendered in the tragic person by the action.”138 This is the fate of the tragic person [persona] within the scope of the plot, pertaining to its poetic invention. But Castelvetro nevertheless introduces a second end, one that “reaches out beyond the tragedy and penetrates the souls of the spectators, producing in them emotions of pity and fear.”139 From the perspective of the spectator, he suggests, the constitution of the tragedy looks markedly different than it does for the poet. Plot is primary for the poet and for poetics, Castelvetro insists, but the properly poetic attributes of tragedy (precise and philosophical) are illegible to the audience without attention to performance, to spectacle and its resources. This crucial distinction between invention and what we might call, tentatively, reception is another one of Castelvetro’s critical contributions to the legacy of Aristotelian poetics, not present in the Poetics itself. His is rather a deliberate revision of the antique text. Aristotle notes that “spectacle [ὄψις] is emotionally potent but falls quite outside the art and is not integral to poetry: tragedy’s capacity 131  LC, 184; CP, I.173. 134  LC, 260; CP, II.193. 136  LC, 286; CP, II.243–4. 139  LC, 68; CP, I.191.

132  LC, 259; CP, II.192. 133  LC, 260; CP, II.193. 135  LC, 285, 281; CP, II.240, 235. 137  LC, 68; CP, I.191. 138  LC, 68; CP, I.191.



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is independent of performance and actors [ἀγῶνος καὶ ὑποκριτῶν]” (Poetics 1450b.16–18).140 Against Aristotle, Castelvetro argues that “spectacle is a constituent part of tragedy and that its peculiar function is to make the plot visible and audible”; where in “epic poetry the plot is manifested by language alone,” tragedy “has a stage, actors, and actions in place of language” [la vista, cosa di più, ma cosa diversa, cioè palco, persone e azzioni, in luogo di parole].141 Put simply, Castelvetro restores spectacle, and performance in general, to tragedy. While he treats performance and the constitution of plot in tragedy separately, heuristically, and recognizes their distinctions, Castelvetro ultimately refuses to sever performance from poetic invention entirely. In fact, performance puts pressure on the Aristotelian determinations of tragedy, possibility, and credibility alike. In his treatment of poetic invention, for instance, Castelvetro affirms that dramatic performance or spectacle garners most praise because “it requires more labor and greater acumen [maggiore industria è e maggiore agume d’ingegno] to represent characters speaking frequently and at length without wearying the audience than to relate actions and deliberations in one’s own words.”142 There is nothing like this in Aristotle, save for the dismissive aside, admitting how “the costumier’s art has more scope than the poet’s for rendering effects of spectacle” (Poetics 1450b.18–20).143 For Castelvetro, it’s not just that the spectacle renders effects, but that it can create tragic effects, namely fear and pity. Moreover, this critical attention to spectacle and performance sets Castelvetro towards an un-Aristotelian definition of poetry, one that takes audience reception as a point of departure. Despite his attention to invention, Castelvetro affirms in no uncertain terms that: poetry was invented for the sole purpose of providing pleasure and recreation, by which I mean to provide pleasure and recreation to the souls of the common people and the rude multitude, who are incapable of understanding the rational proofs, the distinctions, and the arguments all of them subtle and nothing like the talk normally heard among the unlearned, which philosophers make use of in their investigations of the truth of things and students of the arts in constituting the arts; and, not understanding them, it is only natural that they should hear them with annoyance and displeasure, for we are all naturally annoyed beyond measure when others speak of matters exceeding our intellectual reach.144

The poet’s task is: to offer the common people the greatest possible pleasure in their representations of actions never before seen, these being the kind of things that lie within the people’s intellectual range and afford them more pleasure than the acquisition of knowledge, be it through considerations of human character, disquisitions on the arts and sciences, or investigations of phenomena that always occur in a uniform manner.145

Moreover, for Castelvetro unruly episodes or irrational elements of the plot, things incredible or impossible, are actually worst when integral to the performance or presentation of the tragic plot. The incredible or improbable is most tolerable, for 140  AP, 52–5. 143  AP, 52–5.

141  LC, 313, 315; CP, II.356, 358. 142  LC, 250; CP, II.166. 144  LC, 19; CP, I.46. 145  LC, 23; CP, I.53.

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instance, when “it forms no part of the spectacle” [La qual parte non ragionevole è tolerabile, poiché non è introdotta nella rappresentazione].146 Castelvetro, preoccupied as he is with audiences composed of the common people, is nevertheless eager to retain “the process of reasoning” [sillogizzando] native to tragedy.147 Indeed, he attempts to extend this attention to probability and necessity to spectacle as well, to bring performance under the rational aegis of tragedy. Plot is tied, primarily and inextricably, to sillogismo, to reason and dialectic, even for “the ignorant multitude” [persona commune].148 Spectacle, in turn, accommodates plot and its resources to the capacities of the audience, which Castelvetro often imagines as a rude multitude. Nevertheless, spectacle is not antithetical to reason as Aristotle suggests. For Castelvetro, spectacle and performance should maintain credibility and communicate probability and necessity with no less rigor than plot. This requires detailed theses on accommodation. T R A G E D Y A N D A C C O M M O D AT I O N As Castelvetro develops his approach to tragedy and performance, further Reformation stakes of the commentary come to light. The multitude, he claims, are generally unable to conceive of tragedy in terms of plot, and require personae and performances in order to comprehend the more universal, more abstract determinations of agency and causality operating at the level of plot. They require spectacle and similar ideas of character to understand the agencies of divinity, “for the common people speak of God and his actions in the same manner that they do of men and the actions of men.”149 This is ostensibly an adaptation of Erasmian accommodation, by way of Melanchthon, as Castelvetro explains how the myriad effects of poetry are distinct from its constitution. Accommodation is at base an ancient rhetorical principle. In the Rhetorica ad Herennium, for instance, accommodation is fundamental to both the style (elocutio) and arrangement (dispositio) of the matter devised (inventio), as the effectiveness of rhetorical exercises depends precisely on the orator’s ability to accommodate particular circumstances.150 In De Oratore Cicero makes this clear in a language that looks forward to Castelvetro’s treatment of the Poetics. In drawing the distinctions between dialectic—where “dialecticians undertake to decide whether [certain propositions] be true or false; and, if again it be stated hypothetically, with collateral propositions annexed, then they decide whether these others are properly annexed, and whether the conclusion drawn from each and every reasoning is correct”—and rhetoric, he argues that an oration “must be accommodated [accommodanda] to the ears of the multitude, for charming or urging their minds to the esteeming of these propositions, which are weighed in no goldsmith’s balance, but in what I may

146  LC, 260; CP, II.195. 147  LC, 130–1, 133; CP, I.465–6, 474. 148  LC, 127; CP, I.455. 149  LC, 25; CP, I.56. 150  [Cicero] [1954], 6–7 (I.2.3), 184–5 (III.9.16). See also Battles [1977].



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call common scales.”151 For Erasmus, this is duly an exegetical principle: “Divine wisdom speaks to us in baby-talk and like a loving mother accommodates its words to our state of infancy” [ad nostram infantiam voces accommodat], Erasmus claims in his Enchiridion Militis Christiani, “It offers milk to tiny infants in Christ, and herbs to the sick.”152 Moreover, in his Paraclesis, the preface to his 1516 Greek and Latin New Testament, Erasmus affirms again how the “philosophy of Christ” found in Scripture “adjusts itself to the capacities of everyone alike, lowering itself to the little ones and accommodating itself to their abilities”; thus “nothing prevents any man from being a theologian.”153 Erasmus’ is the most influential account of accommodation in the sixteenth century. Drawing from Patristic sources as well as antique rhetoric, the Erasmian approach seemed to bear the imprimatur of the primitive church, so crucial to Protestant exegesis. Erasmus follows Tertullian and Athanasius, among others, insofar as the scopus of Scripture was its rhetorical “aim” or “goal.” In turn, he identifies that scopus as the philosophy of Christ, the true theology.154 This also grounds the principle of accommodation, as Christ accommodates himself to humanity in Scripture, and in his incarnation. Not only is Christ the scopus of Scripture, he is also a model orator, observing decorum across the Gospels, speaking to various interlocutors in different registers in order to facilitate comprehension. Thus accommodation in language, exemplified by Christ in Scripture, is related to accommodation in pedagogy.155 The Erasmian theologian, schooled in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, attends foremost to the situational language of Scripture in order to discover the scopus of true theology; a careful and informed reader who is attentive to dialectic and rhetoric “sees divine things through human words,” a fundamental form of accommodation that speaks, literally, to and through the uniquely human province of language.156 The communication of difficult material depends entirely upon this crucial rhetorical principle, accommodation. Erasmus’ influential Paraphrases are, in a sense, exercises in accommodation where the humanist develops an ars scripturarum based on Jerome’s own poetic and exegetical engagements with Scripture.157 In his brief history of the early modern genre, Bernard Roussel describes how “the composition of a paraphrase implies a transition from philology to the art of eloquence”—in other words, the very activity of Erasmus’ Christian theologian, “persuading us to live an angelic life, free from all stain, in the here and now.”158 Christ himself “accommodated his teaching to hearers in appropriate portions according to a variety of persons, things, times and circumstances, using figurative speech (especially parables, metaphor and allegory) to draw them gradually from the sensible world to a fuller understanding of his spiritual message.”159 In the 151  Cicero [1942], 310–13 (II.xxxviii.157–9) [I change the translation slightly]. 152  Erasmus [1988], 35; and [1540], d3r. 153  Erasmus [1989], “Two Forewards to the Latin Translation of the New Testament,” 121, 123; Erasmus [1520], 9. 154  Boyle [1977], 72–98. 155  Hoffmann [1994], 106–12. 156  Boyle [1977], 72, 38–43. 157  Vessey [2002], 30–2. 158  Roussel [2002], 66; Erasmus [1989], “Two Forewards to the Latin Translation of the New Testament,” 122; and [1520], 12. 159  Hoffmann [1997], 51.

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Paraphrases, Erasmus followed suit, accommodating the language and content of Scripture for pedagogical purposes. Distinguishing between the matter of the work and their forms, and taking into account the degree to which even the Gospels are written for particular occasions, Erasmus proceeds to reframe Scripture for a contemporary audience. It is hardly incidental, for Melanchthon and Castelvetro alike, that Erasmus often renders the pedagogical process in deliberately theatrical terms, reframing the material as a drama complete with protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe, following Donatus, which I addressed in the Introduction.160 Melanchthon is at first glance the heir of Erasmian accommodation, but there is nevertheless a major distinction between their approaches: Erasmus disparages dialectic in theology while Melanchthon sees it as absolutely integral to exegesis.161 For Erasmus, an acute attention to rhetoric enables the careful reader insight into the language of Scripture, allowing one to see the simple truth of the Gospels— that is, Christ—expressed in various ways for various audiences. This is the task of the theologian, to “persuade all men of the most wholesome truth there is,” to “affect the minds and stir the souls of all” [penitus afficiat ac moueat animos omnium], to communicate the philosophy of Christ, “the simplest expression of which is always the most forceful” [cuius quo simplicior, hoc efficacior est oratio].162 Just as Scripture and Christ demonstrate elocution, so should the theologian. Dialectic, on the other hand, obscures this simple truth. Moreover, Erasmus associates dialectic (and Aristotle in particular) with the evasion of the philosophy of Christ, with the scholastic quarrels that detract from it. This is not to say that Erasmus rejected dialectic tout court but rather that he believed it muddied theological matters and rendered Scripture unintelligible and dry. For Melanchthon, however, dialectic was crucial to exegesis, and to accommodation in particular. As early as 1527, in his commentary on Paul’s letter to the Colossians, Melanchthon affirmed that Scripture was impenetrable without adequate knowledge of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric.163 Melanchthon believed that Paul himself wrote with rhetorical and dialectical forms in mind, and that the Epistles served as an exegetical frame, informed by rhetoric and dialectic, to understand the Gospels. In fact, as Manfred Hoffmann notes, “dialectic governed both the invention and disposition of speech”—that is, for Melanchthon, both rhetoric, in its suasory capacities, and the organization of the text, its argumentum and its partition into loci, were united under the province of dialectic.164 In other words, Melanchthon’s insistence on the importance of dialectic qualified the Erasmian rhetorical approach, emphasizing the logical valences of invention, disposition, and elocution. With respect to accommodation, Melanchthon maintained (with Erasmus) that the figurative language of the Bible “warrants the most attention” [potissimum 160  Hoffmann [1997], 53; and [1994], 144–5. 161  For a more detailed treatment of Erasmian and Melanchthonian exegesis, their correspondence and disagreement, see Wengert [1998], 31–109, especially 58–64. 162  Boyle [1977], 33–57; Erasmus [1989], “Two Forewards to the Latin Translation of the New Testament,” 119; and [1520], 5. 163  Wengert [1997], 107. 164  Hoffmann [1997], 75.



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spectanda sunt], enabling one to “see the design of the Holy Spirit in Scripture—how sweetly and charmingly he instructs the devout [quam suaviter, quam blande erudiat pios] with only one purpose, that we be saved.”165 But this is a scopus that also requires facility in dialectic, “in the explanation of things that are worth knowing, in order that the explanation be true, appropriate, simple, clear, certain and powerful . . . in order that you be able to judge and refute those straying from the boundaries, and recall them, so to speak, to the path and within the limits.”166 This is dialectic, and no less an authority than Paul exhorts the Christian Reader to employ dialectic where “the heavenly notions are to be divided by a fixed method,” a method that “is taught properly in dialectic only.”167 Melanchthon asserts, in no uncertain terms, that it is “necessary to maintain dialectic in the Church, but let it be erudite, respectful, serious and loving of truth, and let it not be garrulous, quarrelsome, or deceitful.”168 According to Peter Mack, Melanchthonian dialectic “is concerned above all with teaching, which consists of defining, dividing, and arguing. Dialectic provides the argumentative basis for speeches and texts, which rhetoric then makes more forceful by choosing expressions which will move and please the audience.”169 Rhetoric, then, consists primarily of grammar, figures, amplification, and decorum—arts of speech that strive for clarity, emotional effect,  and persuasion. Yet, ultimately, rhetoric and dialectic are inextricable for Melanchthon; “for both the rhetorician and the dialectician the argument is the same,” but while the former traverses the seas “with sails somewhat more tightly drawn, the other meanders more freely.” And this, to a purpose: “the language of one is suited for teaching, the other to inspiring.”170 For Melanchthon, then, dialectic discovers the forms of definition and relation, the very logic, of a given text while rhetoric accommodates this logic to particular audiences in particular circumstances for purposes of persuasion, motivation, and inspiration. Melanchthonian dialectical rhetoric is in this manner peculiarly suited to philosophy or, as he put it in a 1536 oration on philosophy, to “method and style of discourse” [methodus et forma orationis]; those who “have obtained for themselves the habit [ἕξιν] of relating to method everything that they want to 165  Melanchthon [1969], 73; [1993], 166. I alter the translation here. 166  Of course, Melanchthon recognizes, beyond a doubt, that “I am not so mistaken that I declare that sacred matters can be penetrated by the industry of human minds,” and that which human minds can know of God or God’s will is contingent upon revelation in prophecy and Scripture. And in order to understand these forms, “the power of words must be known, in which divine mysteries are hidden as if in a shrine”; moreover, “no one could judge correctly about speech unless he had thoroughly studied the method of speaking correctly [recte dicendi rationem]”—that is, rhetoric. In addition, Melanchthon affirms “the true way of teaching and reason is God’s gift and is necessary in expounding the heavenly doctrine and the examination of truth in other things”—that is, dialectic. Melanchthon, “Dedicatory letter to the Questions on Dialectics” [1999], 84; “Praise of eloquence” [1999], 75, 76; “Encomion eloquentiae 1523” [1961], 60. 167  Melanchthon, “Dedicatory letter to the Questions on Dialectics” [1999], 87. 168  Melanchthon, “Dedicatory letter to the Questions on Dialectics” 1999], 86. 169  Mack [2011], 110. In his De rhetorica libri tres (1519), Melanchthon presented rhetoric and dialectic as complementary arts, insisting that they be studied together. Dialectic proceeded by way of definition and division, attending to the arrangement of material as well as to its demonstration and veracity. 170  Schneider [1997], 31.

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understand or teach to others, also know how to represent methods in religious discussions, how to clear up what is complicated, pull together what is scattered and shed light on what is obscure and ambiguous.”171 Melanchthon is aware of the inevitable impossibility of ascertaining God and God’s will, revealed to human beings only through accommodation in Scripture. Indeed, the Scriptures, particularly the Gospel and Pauline Epistles, communicate God’s ineffability. “I am not so mistaken that I declare that sacred matters can be penetrated by the industry of human minds,” Melanchthon claims. “There are things in sacred matters which no one would ever behold, were it not that God shows them to us, nor does Christ become known to us [innotescit nobis], unless the Holy Spirit teach us [doceat].”172 But they also exhort readers to know God, through Christ. Calvin, for instance, in his commentary on Romans 1:19, channels Melanchthon in detailing how “we cannot fully comprehend God in His greatness, but that there are certain limits within which men ought to confine themselves, even as God accommodates to our limited capacity [ad modulum nostrum attemperat] every declaration which He makes of Himself. Only fools, therefore, seek to know the essence of God.”173 Melanchthon believed that Paul and the Evangelists used rhetorical and dialectical methods to compose their respective works, and that the capable reader of the New Testament would take into account not only the genre or species of oratory (history, epistle, etc.) but also the audience to whom the work was addressed.174 And even here, Melanchthon is keenly aware of the difference between the rigorous method of understanding Scripture, informed by dialectic and rhetoric, and the need for orators themselves—preachers and teachers—to exercise accommodation in their lessons. In other words, for Melanchthon dialectic and rhetoric remain distinct insofar as they inform different forms of speech and appeal to different human capacities. Castelvetro approaches the philosophical claims of Aristotelian tragedy with this account of accommodation in mind. In the Poetica, spectacle emerges as a vehicle for accommodation. Modifying Aristotle’s account in the Poetics, Castelvetro insists on the importance of spectacle because its rhetorical force complements the dialectical organization of the plot. Castelvetro retains the philosophical precision of the Poetics in his treatment of plot, the primary component of tragedy. Tragic pleasure, however, takes shape in the performance, in the appeal to a people for whom the primacy of plot and its intricacies and consistencies are perhaps obscure. An exemplary tragic plot is, for Castelvetro, based on strict dialectical criteria while the performance accommodates the material to the capacities of a vulgar crowd. This is best seen in the multitude’s insistence on character, which renders the deity intelligible. When it comes to “the true God, the elect angels, and the souls of the blest” as well as the antique pantheon of deities and demigods, Castelvetro recognizes that, in poetry:

171  Melanchthon, “On Philosophy (1536)” [1999], 128; “De philosophia oratio 1536” 1961], 91. 172  Melanchthon, “Praise of eloquence” [1999], 75–6; “Encomion eloquentiae 1523” [1961], 59. 173  Calvin, “Calvin’s Commentaries” [1960], 31. 174  Schneider [1997], 45.



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All these beings are assigned speaking roles because they are believed by the uneducated to have a human form or because holding, as they do, that their own form is perfect and fashioned in the image of the divine they cannot be brought to believe that the gods and other beings, true or fabulous, whom we have named have a form different from their own.175

While this is relatively innocuous in comedy or epic, it is a delicate problem in tragedy insofar as it threatens to obscure the unity of plot and tragic sillogizzando. Accommodation comes with risks, especially where tragedies rely too much on spectacle, testing the restrictions concerning credibility and performance. This is the case, Castelvetro claims, in late medieval plays still performed at Rome, particularly in incredible stage depictions of Christ’s Passion. Castelvetro, like a host of Reformers English and Continental, censures the Passion plays, but not necessarily on moral grounds. He condemns, rather, “the custom prevalent in some localities of representing the Passion of Our Lord or other histories [o altre istorie] dramatically” on grounds that such stories are not appropriate for poetry, their plots historical, exercising no poetic invention.176 Moreover, such Passion plays are egregious examples of incredible drama. Without criticizing the source material (Scripture), Castelvetro doubts that such performances are ever able to accomplish what they are meant to do: to depict, realistically and credibly, the details of a human execution. Torture and execution are, practically, inimitable as: deeds of cruelty and horror cannot be set before the eyes of an audience without violence to verisimilitude and that when they are they move to laughter rather than to tears, producing the effect not of tragedy but of comedy. (If anyone doubts this let him attend some representation [rappresentazione] of the Passion of Our Lord, especially the one to be seen in Rome, and let him contain his laughter if he can.)177

Castelvetro assumes that the events of the Passion are in fact tragic, and that the Passion plays in turn fail to elicit the emotional reaction proper to tragedy from the audience because they cannot represent the death convincingly. Crucifixions are, put simply, difficult to stage and thus “fall short of the desired effect upon the audience and more often than not will move it to laughter rather than tears”— which, again, was precisely “the effect of the Passion of our Lord in those localities where it was customarily enacted [si costumava di fare], so that the people were little edified by the spectacle.”178 Castelvetro subtly marks Christ’s death as singular, inimitable, in his treatment of spectacle. No imitation of Christ can be truly credible, he suggests, especially where Castelvetro’s credibilità converges with the very terms of religious faith, the Italian credo: “to believe, to trust, to credit, to affie.”179 His formal comments confirm, however subtly, the impossibility of Imitatio Christi, both on stage and in effecting one’s own salvation. All references to the Passion plays at Rome were methodically removed from the 1576 Poetica. In these references Castelvetro surreptitiously insists on justification 175  LC, 30; CP, I.73. 176  LC, 34; CP, I.80. 177  LC, 144; CP, I.378—another censured section. 179  Florio [2013], 174.

178  LC, 252; CP, II.170–1.

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by faith, on Christ’s inimitable sacrifice. The Poetica follows Il Beneficio di Cristo, the most important and influential treatise of the Italian Reformation, recognizing the “stupendous benefit that the Christian has received from Jesus Christ crucified,” where “faith itself justifies, meaning that God receives as just, all those who truly believe [veramente credono] that Jesus Christ has satisfied their sins.”180 The Beneficio was instrumental to Italian heterodoxy precisely because it appealed to a variety of readers, and expressed doctrines like justification and faith in broad terms. Castelvetro’s entire treatment of credibility in tragedy, as well as the distinctions between poetry and history, follow directly from the Beneficio. His commentary bears the unmistakable traces of this central text of the early Italian Reformation, well known to the Modenese Accademici. For instance, in the Beneficio, we learn that, with respect to the matter of faith, one: should not be deceived and think like false Christians who drag everything down to the level of carnal life. For them, true faith consists in believing the story of Jesus Christ in the way that one believes those of Caesar and Alexander. This kind of belief is a historical faith [una fede istorica], founded on the mere report of men and writings, and impressed lightly on the mind through established custom [una certa usanza]. It is like the faith of the Turks, who believe in the fables of the Koran for these same reasons. Faith such as this is a human fantasy [una imaginazione umana]; it does not renew man’s heart at all or warm it with divine love, and no good works or a new life follow from it. Accordingly, they falsely say that faith alone does not justify but that we need works, contrary to the Holy Scripture and to the blessed doctors of the holy Church. I reply to them that this historical and most vain faith, with the works added to it [questa istorica e vanissima fede con le opere], not only does not justify but also hurls people into the depth of hell, like those who had no oil in their lamps, that is, no living faith in their hearts [cioè viva fede nei cuori].181

The Beneficio suggests a distinction between historical faith and true faith. For Castelvetro, this becomes a distinction between vain historical faith and poetic faith, where the credibility proper to faith is more affective and enduring than any belief in particular historical events. In other words, historical faith is distinct from the faith that justifies. In fact, the author of the Beneficio is careful to illustrate the affective resources of faith, the degree to which true faith is inextricable from fear. The fear produced by Scripture also proceeds by way of accommodation, first harrowing those Christians “who do not observe the decorum of God’s children” [il decoro delli figliuoli di Dio] before edifying the truly faithful.182 Initially, readers are “treated like slaves and held in fear until they taste how sweet the Lord is, and faith produces its effects in them, and they have enough filial 180  Il Beneficio di Cristo was certainly among the most popular and familiar heterodox works, circulating in print and in manuscript, in multiple versions; the reformer Pier Paolo Vergerio testified to the wide circulation and influence of Il Beneficio di Cristo, estimating that 40,000 copies “had been printed and sold in Venice alone”—a hyperbolic suggestion, certainly, but a telling one as well. [Da Mantova and Flaminio] [1965], 94; Da Mantova and Flaminio [1975], 118; and Richardson [2009], 179. See also Caponetto [1999], 76–93. 181  [Da Mantova and Flaminio] [1965], 67; and Da Mantova and Flaminio [1975], 66. 182  [Da Mantova and Flaminio] [1965], 90–1; and Da Mantova and Flaminio [1975], 111–12.



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love to maintain them in the decorum of Christian piety and in the imitation of Christ”; Christian fear is not a “servile” but a “filial fear” [timore servile ma filiale], one that is “most compatible with Christian charity, whereas servile fear cannot exist with it.”183 This Reformation language converges with rhetoric and dialectic in Castelvetro’s treatment of accommodation—for instance, in his poetic approach to God’s providence, in the Poetica. Castelvetro notes how “Aristotle seems to assume that God watches with special care over individual persons and particularly over those of pre-eminent virtue,” which is why Aristotle prohibits tragic poets from representing holy men “falling from happiness to misery.”184 Such a representation would be neither “piteous nor fear-inspiring but abominable, i.e., it would be such as to induce men to believe that God did not exercise a special providence over his true servants [providenza speziale de’ suoi divoti], that He was an unjust God, withholding their true reward from those who render Him due honor and permitting their fall from happiness to misery.”185 Castelvetro emphasizes the effect of the performance, the extent to which an audience focuses their attention on mos, costumi, or ἤθος, and are in turn moved by such a depiction. This is the rhetorical force of the tragedy. But Castelvetro is also keen to show how, in the Metaphysics, “the same Aristotle affirms that the divine intellect would stoop too low and demean itself if it took notice of all individual things and exercised a special care over each”—a properly philosophical determination of God.186 These are not contradictory doctrines. On the contrary, while “the one met in the Metaphysics is Aristotle’s own,” the other “simply reflects the belief commonly held by the populace, which is quite different from his.”187 Aristotle, philosopher, approaches God rigorously in the Metaphysics, but tragedy, in performance, appeals to the people for whom philosophy is inaccessible. Castelvetro’s interpretation of tragedy rests on this accommodation, the sense in which tragedy is composed philosophically but translated, in performance, to the multitude. It is in this sense, moreover, that Castelvetro accounts for Aristotle’s ἤθος. In this case, the philosopher and the tragic poet might express (not solve or comprehend) the unknowable will of God in dialectical terms via rational discussion, logical demonstration, and the consistency proper to tragic plot; the common people, the audiences of tragedies, are convinced of God’s benevolence or moved by his justice through the spectacular presentation of costumi. Even the sharpest audiences generally attribute ill events or faults in character to immediate causes and not to the universals at work in the plot, focusing attention on episodes rather than the plot in its entirety. The common people, for instance, those: who believe that God rules the world and watches over all individual things, exercising a special care over each, believe also that He is just in all his actions and makes all things redound to His own glory and to the good of His faithful servants. Therefore when they witness the suffering of a holy man they do not forthwith revile and blaspheme God and accuse Him of injustice, but turning their hate against the immediate 183  [Da Mantova and Flaminio] [1965], 90–1; and Da Mantova and Flaminio [1975], 111–12. 184  LC, 162; CP, I.361. 185  LC, 162; CP, I.361. 186  LC, 162; CP, I.361. 187  LC, 162; CP, I.361.

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causes which by God’s permissive will had the power to work the holy man’s hurt, they absolve God of all blame, and unable to conceive of Him as the author of evil, explain the holy man’s suffering in one of a number of ways.188

Tragedy translates God’s will in performance. Castelvetro’s tragic poet traffics in universals, unities, and the sillogizzando appropriate to Aristotelian tragedy, expressing God rationally at the level of composition. But the task of the tragic poet qua poet is to accommodate this material to the capacities of the audience, for whom the “immediate causes” of the plot are more poignant and forceful. It is in this capacity that the poet treats customs or mores (costumi), in performance. Castelvetro’s example is hardly neutral. The common people, the tragic audience, affirm God’s benevolence and unwavering justice, “unable to conceive of Him as the author of evil,” despite the plot or the actions and character of the tragic persona. In other words, audiences do not censure God for the dreadful events in the play, even when the persona (in this case, “the holy man”) has done nothing to warrant punishment or affliction, or when a wicked man seems to prosper, unduly. Castelvetro’s is a Reformation emendation of Aristotle’s claims concerning plot, attentive to justification, providence, and predestination. Aristotle argues that the best plots include a single transformation “from prosperity to adversity, caused not by depravity [μοχθηρίαν] but by a great error [ἁμαρτίαν μεγάλην]”; plots with double structures, “with opposite outcomes for good and bad characters,” are more appropriate to comedy and considered best “only because of the weakness of audiences” (Poetics 1453a.12–39).189 Aristotle privileges “the actual structure of events” in a plot, “the higher priority and the aim of a superior poet,” precisely because the plot “should be so structured that, even without seeing it performed, the person who hears the events that occur experiences horror and pity at what comes about” (Poetics 1453b.1–6).190 In turn, Aristotle laments the degree to which “poets follow, and pander to the taste of, the spectators” [ἀκολουθοῦσι γὰρ οἱ ποιηταὶ κατ’ εὐχὴν ποιοῦντες τοῖς θεαταῖς] (Poetics 1453a.33–5).191 Castelvetro completely disagrees. Tragedy “cannot produce—as epic poetry produces—its proper effect when read, and it is not true that it cannot be understood but by readers of the degree of cultivation”; moreover, for Castelvetro, “spectacle is a constituent part of tragedy and that its peculiar function is to make the plot visible and audible.”192 Spectacle and performance are necessary means of accommodation, as tragic poetry is composed and performed for the common people, according to their capacities and desires. For Castelvetro, Aristotle is wrong to assume that, observing the fall of a “holy man” [persona santa] or the rise of a “wicked man” [persona malvagia], audiences are moved “to indignation against God” [sdegnare contra Dio].193 On the contrary: the people, who believe that all things happen by the just disposition of God, being each and all under His special providence, may, to be sure, abominate the immediate causes of a holy man’s fall and yet believe that God has permitted it for His own glory 188  LC, 163; CP, I.362–3. 189  AP, 70–3. 190  AP, 72–3. 192  LC, 313, 315; CP, II.356, 358. 193  LC, 163–4; CP, I.363–4.

191  AP, 72–3.



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and the holy man’s benefit. The same abomination for the immediate causes and the same justification of God’s ways prevails among them when they witness the rise of a bad man from misery to happiness, for then they may believe that God has bestowed happiness upon him to reward him here below for the few good deeds he has done in the course of a bad life, or they may think that He has exalted him to the heights so that the fall thence may be all the greater, or may imagine that He has appointed him judge and hangman to chastise His elect [eletti suoi], who by frequently neglecting their duties in periods of tranquility had failed to hold God’s commandments in due honor. In short, they will believe anything of God except this, that He has shown favor to a wicked man for some evil end and that He is or can be the author of evil.194

Here in the Poetica, Castelvetro brings his Protestant preoccupations with providence, election, and justification to bear on tragic plot. God’s will is fixed and Castelvetro follows Il Beneficio di Cristo insofar as “the true Christian believes with certainty that he is predestined to eternal life and must be saved, not through his own merits certainly, but through the election of God, who has predestined us, not through our own works but in order to show his mercy.”195 Plot, “the substance of tragedy [la sustanzia della tragedia], to which the other parts attach themselves as accidents [come accidenti],” communicates God’s unwavering justice as well as “his special providence.”196 Insofar as the personae in tragedies are justified, “Justifying faith is a work of God in [them].”197 But the audience, in turn, is licensed to apprehend and judge the various personae in a tragedy with reference to the “immediate causes” [le cagioni prossime] of the plot—in light of the actions, emotions, language, encounters, and episodes that comprise the plot. Castelvetro offers this singular theory of tragic accommodation to address the gap, in Aristotle’s Poetics, between plot and spectacle. Moreover, tragic accommodation serves to distinguish the equally crucial components of tragic poetry: the consistent plot, arranged with an eye to philosophical rigor, and dramatic performance, attentive to rhetoric and to the edification and motivation of a people. Castelvetro suggests that it is at once disruptive and misleading to depict an intervenient God in the plot. Aristotle criticized “miraculous solutions [soluzione] effected through the gracious intervention of God” as elements of irrationality (Poetics 1454b.2–5, 1460a.26–7).198 Castelvetro extends Aristotle’s formal judgment to Reformation Christianity, “For all things being possible to God, solutions due to divine intervention are miraculous but not marvelous [miracolosa, non è maravigliosa], and they may be worked out without great exertion on the poet’s part, for there is no difficulty from which a character may not be made to extricate himself with divine help.”199 Taking into account God’s omnipotence, Castelvetro suggests that dei ex machinis and divine interventions are indeed miraculous but not admirable or even noteworthy. The faithful who recognize God’s omnipotence should not find such expressions of this omnipotence particularly remarkable. 194  LC, 163–4; CP, I.363–4. 195  [Da Mantova and Flaminio] [1965], 93; and Da Mantova and Flaminio [1975], 116–17. 196  LC, 71, 164; CP, I.203–4, 363–4. 197  [Da Mantova and Flaminio] [1965], 67; and Da Mantova and Flaminio [1975], 66–7. 198  LC, 139; CP, I.435. 199  LC, 139; CP, I.435.

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Divine interventions in tragedy, moreover, are an affront to poetic invention. Although poets who employ such devices depict things that are miraculous, if not marvelous, and move their audiences: they entered the sheepfold not by the gate, the way of the shepherd and the watchdog [entra il pastore e ’l cane guardiano], but by the way of the thief and the wolf [entra il furo e ’l lupo]; that is to say, they did not come to the more marvelous and the more moving by the gate of verisimilitude, the way of the poet and true imitator, but by the gate of incredibility, the way of the fool and the ignorant mass of men.200

Castelvetro’s curious turn to pastoral language is telling. In an idiom generally reserved for the critique of the clergy, Castelvetro scorns poets who flout credibility and verisimilitude in an effort to delude the multitude. When accommodated for audiences, in performance, an excellent plot is one that eschews divine intervention in favor of “human intervention [l’aiuto umano] originating . . . in incidents within the plot itself ”; divine intervention is only acceptable in cases like “the never-completed sacrifices of Isaac and Iphigenia, [where] the deed was to have been done in obedience to a divine command” established beforehand.201 Castelvetro’s interpretation of Aristotle rests on his division of plot and ­performance. This formal distinction frames—and performance accommodates—an otherwise difficult distinction between faith and works, a Reformation preoccupation. Brian Cummings has effectively demonstrated how theological debates between Erasmus and Luther took shape in grammatical terms, how “the humanist crisis of language in this way merges with the Reformation crisis of theology”; one can say the same for Castelvetro, with respect to tragedy, plot, and spectacle.202 In tragic poetry “the events in question, whether known through history or oral tradition [fama], must be known only in summary and universalized form,” just as what is “represented by poetry is a plot and human action” [una favola e rassomiglia una azzione umana], not discrete characters or discrete actions.203 The tragic poet, from the perspective of plot and invention, expresses universal forms with dialectical precision and philosophical sophistication. Character is incidental from this perspective—for Castelvetro, accidental—subordinate to elements of plot and the dialectical demonstration of human action. Castelvetro’s poet frames human action in a manner related to the God that justifies human action, where, following the Beneficio, “Justifying faith is a work of God in us [una opera di Dio in noi] . . . It is divine faith which inserts us in the death and resurrection of Christ, and consequently mortifies our flesh with its affections and concupiscences [con gli affetti e con le concupiscenze].”204 Justification, like tragic invention, is an expression of human action in the generic or universal sense; discrete human actions are irrelevant in relation to the Christic affects and events that redeem the lives of the faithful. Human actions are justified only insofar as they relate to the universal aspects of Christ’s own life. 200  LC, 289; CP, II.252. 201  LC, 179; CP, I.404. 202  Cummings [2002], 142. 203  LC, 95, 276; CP, I.252–3, II.220. 204  [Da Mantova and Flaminio] [1965], 67; and Da Mantova and Flaminio [1975], 66–7.



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But Castelvetro also recognizes the importance of character, foregrounding Aristotle’s comments on mores and spectacle. In performance, plots expose character: “Characterization appears when . . . speech or action reveals the nature of a moral choice” (Poetics 1454a.17–19).205 For Aristotle, this obscures the primacy of the plot; for Aristotle, “character” and “moral choice” are effects of the plot. Seizing on this moment in the Poetics, Castelvetro affirms that this is precisely how common people understand character and morality, even if theirs is ultimately an inadequate understanding of plot and action. The “character” [ἤθος] or “custome” that is revealed in performance is an accommodation, a way to understand the exigencies of plot which the talented poet renders intelligible on the tragic stage. This in no way challenges the Aristotelian preoccupation with plot. Instead, Castelvetro’s contribution to the Aristotelian tradition as well as to a nascent institution of Reformation poetics is to retrieve spectacle and performance from abeyance, in an effort to account for how plot, in its complexity, is accommodated to the capacities of common audiences. Castelvetro’s treatment of tragic plot and character mirrors Reformation studies of faith and works. In Il Beneficio di Cristo, for instance, we learn how: Justifying faith then is like a flame of fire, which cannot help but shine forth. It is true that the flame alone burns the wood without the aid of light, and yet the flame cannot exist without light. In the same way, it is true that faith alone burns and extinguishes sins without the aid of works, and yet faith cannot exist without good works. If we see a flame of fire with no light, we know it is painted and unreal [dipinta e vana], and similarly, if we do not see the light of good works in someone, it is a sign that he does not have the true, inspired faith that God gives to his elect to justify and glorify them.206

Castelvetro develops his approach to tragedy and accommodation in conversation with early theses on faith and works. Like the author of Il Beneficio di Cristo, Castelvetro recuperates works—that is, the actions of discrete characters that reveal “the nature of a moral choice”—in performance. But this has little to do with the complex causality at stake in the plot, through which a poet, or God, works and in which character is decidedly subordinate. Character, like good works in an economy of salvation, is proper to appearance, not to the real causes at work in a plot in which character is merely a facet among others. Castelvetro’s retrieval of performance is at once a recognition of the didactic powers of tragedy, an admission of the primacy of plot, and an effort to describe the processes of accommodation through which the most rigorous accounts of agency, dialectic, and invention are communicated to a Reformation audience.

205  AP, 78–9. 206  [Da Mantova and Flaminio] [1965], 69; and Da Mantova and Flaminio [1975], 69–70.

3 John Rainolds, Hamlet, and the Anti-Theatrical Aristotle It is a lie [mendacium] to speak one thing or to signify it by means of gesture, and to mean another thing, either impudently or with the desire of doing harm. Thus I do not call those figures “lies” [mendacia] by which something that it is unnecessary to declare is concealed with probable cause, as when Rahab denied that the spies were at her house (Joshua 2:3). Such figures are called “mendacia officiosa.” Stories and poems are related to these, all of which can be described as figures or imitations. Philipp Melanchthon, Definitiones Multarum Appellationum (1553)1

While Castelvetro offers tragic spectacle as a means of accommodation, his English contemporary John Rainolds reinforces Aristotle’s own distinctions between plot and performance, emphasizing tragedy as a valuable dialectical and rhetorical resource remote from stagecraft and acting. Renowned among scholars of early modern drama for his virulent opposition to stage-playing, the Puritan Rainolds ranks among the most infamous anti-theatrical writers in early modern England. In his treatise Th’overthrow of stage-playes (1599) Rainolds works to expose the “vanitie and unlawfulnesse of Plaies and Enterludes,” spectacular performances that “hath bene often spoken against by the holy men of God”; drawing upon antique history and law as well as foundational works of early Christianity, Rainolds derides stage-players and -playing (particularly the early modern conventions of transvestite performance) and proves such entertainments unlawful, sinful, and dangerous.2 Since Rainolds’ anti-theatrical commitments are so pronounced, however, scholars have long overlooked the extent to which his controversial arguments against spectacle and stage-playing draw substantially from period poetics. In other words, Rainolds’ anti-theatrical agenda hinges on a vision of tragedy informed directly by Aristotle’s Poetics as well as a broad archive of poetry ancient and modern. Rainolds prized the resources of tragedy, which he used to underscore key points 1 The Definitiones Multarum Appellationum, which Melanchthon evidently wrote in 1552 and 1553, were initially published with his Loci Praecipui Theologici in 1553. See Melanchthon [1553], 1715; [1556], d3v: “MENDACIUM est petulanter aut cupiditate nocendi aliud loqui, seu gestu significare, & aliud sentire. Non enim nomino mendacia figuras, quibus ex probabili caussa aliquid tegitur, quod non necesse est dici, ut Raab negat speculatores domi suae esse. Tales figurae nominantur officiosa mendacia. Huc et Apologi ac poëmata pertinent, quae omnia possunt dici figurae seu similitudines.” 2  ROverthrow, A2r.

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across his lectures, sermons, and letters as well as his thorough controversial works written in the name of Reformation. Later readers remembered Rainolds by way of tragedy, celebrating his life and work apropos of tragic figures and their eponymous fabulae. He was esteemed as an “English Oedipus” responsible for vanquishing that “monstrous Sphynx of corrupted knowledge,” Roman Catholicism.3 He was honored as another Ajax at the close of Isaak Wake’s 1607 funeral oration.4 Even when he wrote passionately against theater—against performances at the university as well as in the playhouses, whether staged by students or professional companies— Rainolds supported his claims with rich references to Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, and Aristotle’s Poetics as well as the most sophisticated scholarship available, works by Piero Vettori, Francesco Robortello, and Alessandro Piccolomini. With the Poetics in mind, Rainolds emphasized tragedy’s rhetorical and dialectical capacities. When read or recited aloud, tragedy yielded insight into the ethical and emotional dimensions of oratory as well as aspects of truth, faith, and probability. When tragedy was rendered too histrionic or spectacular, however, these crucial resources were abused and the rational kernel of Aristotelian tragedy, obscured. Yet Rainolds is rarely remembered as a careful reader or admirer of any poetry, to say nothing of tragedy.5 Most modern readers recognize him only as an 3  We have no particular reason to suspect that the author of this statement (the schoolmaster John Leycester) was critical of Rainolds. While the comparison may strike modern readers as unfortunate, early modern readers tended to associate Oedipus more with intelligence (as he solves the Sphinx’s riddle) than with incest. Leycester probably collates both Sophocles’ and Seneca’s Oedipus plays with the Oedipus of Sum Davus, non Oedipus, a proverbial Oedipus known for his extraordinary intellect, his preternatural ability to resolve the riddle posed by the Sphinx. Rainolds [1638], A3r. See Erasmus [1982], 265–6. 4  The comparison here, between Rainolds and Ajax, is subtle as Wake tacitly substitutes the name “Rainoldo” for “Aiace” in choice lines from Sophocles’ play. Wake’s Latin text follows: —agesis, quisquis amicus Ades hic praesens, propera, curre, Impende viro summo officium. Ac nemo quidem, queis loquor, horum Rainoldo fuit melior vir. The quote is taken verbatim from Joseph Justus Scaliger’s Latin translation of Ajax—namely, from the end of Act V, as Teucer praises the fallen Ajax. Wake has merely replaced Scaliger’s “forti” with “summo,” and the proper “Aiace” with “Rainoldo.” In Fuller’s English translation of the oration, published in Abel Redevivus, the sense of the quote is different: Come friends and lend your helpe, let’s now inter Truths noble champion, and Romes conquerer. And never let the best, the chiefest dare, To wrong his ashes by a proud compare. Here Fuller adds a reference to Rome as well as additional verses. Ajax is particularly important to Wake, as he was present at a 1605 performance of Ajax Flagellifer at Oxford, staged for King James and his retinue; according to Sarah Knight, Wake “suggests that Sophocles’ play was significantly altered for the 1605 performance,” and he “glosses over the more unsavory aspects of Greek tragic plot.” Thus it is easier to understand Wake’s comparison of Rainolds with Ajax. See Wake [1608], A9r; Fuller [1651], 497–8; “Sophoclis Aiax Lorarius, Stylo Tragico a Josepho Scaligero Julii F. translatus” in Scaliger [1574], II.49 (sig. DD1r); Sophocles, Ajax [1994], 160–3; Wake [1607], 78–9; and Knight [2009], 29, 36. 5  Rainolds’ contemporaries accounted him a great champion of poetry—so much so that his friend and student Henry Jackson included the Oratio in Laudem Artis Poeticae (by Henry Dethick, although long misattributed to Rainolds) in the posthumous edition of Rainolds’ Orationes duodecim (1619).



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­anti-theatrical writer, an opponent of the theater, and a tenacious critic of comedy and tragedy as they appeared to Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences. Rainolds is the archetypal rabid Puritan, a Zeal-of-the-Land Busy at war with the players, “fulminating against all theatrical productions, of whatever origin, under whatever auspices, and against all plays, in whatever languages, of whatever apparent harmlessness of subject matter”—espousing the “anti-theatrical prejudice” that he supposedly shared with his contemporaries John Northbrooke, Stephen Gosson, and Phillip Stubbes, as well as his enthusiastic Caroline reader William Prynne.6 Th’overthrow of stage-playes is seen as representative of his abiding bias against literature at large, and certainly against the canon of Shakespearean Tragedy taking shape concurrently. Rainolds’ attack on stage-plays is generally regarded only as an expression of his Puritanism rather than a formal and religious commitment to an alternative idea of tragedy. But there is a positive vision of tragedy at work in Rainolds’ anti-theatrical writing. It is, moreover, a vision consonant with Aristotle’s Poetics. Elsewhere Rainolds is unfailingly critical of Aristotle, but in terms of theater Rainolds’ Aristotle is a consummate Puritan, simultaneously enamored with tragedy and critical of both stage-playing and spectacle. Rainolds is perhaps the first early modern critic to mobilize the Poetics, in concert with antique tragedy and the conventions of rhetorical delivery, against theater. As I illustrated in Chapter  2, Ludovico Castelvetro revised the Poetics to explain how theatrical performances accommodated sharp dialectical and rhetorical principles to unwashed audiences. Rainolds, no admirer of poetic accommodation, departs from critics like Castelvetro insofar as he accepts Aristotle’s pejorative account of spectacle without modifying the claims of the Poetics by way of accommodation.7 His is an anti-theatrical Aristotle. As such, Rainolds is reluctant to define tragedy in reductive theatrical terms that are foreign to the Poetics. Gosson (who likely studied with Rainolds as a student at Corpus Christi College at Oxford) claims that, “The argument of Tragedies is wrath, crueltie, incest, injurie, murther eyther violent by sworde, or voluntary by poyson,” and that the “persons” are “Gods, Goddesses, furies, fiends, Kinges, Quenes, and mightie men.”8 Rainolds offers no comparable treatment. Instead, tragedy is defined in relation to rhetoric and dialectic, as per the Poetics and its most sophisticated commentaries. A faithful and exacting Elizabethan reader of the Aristotelian corpus, Rainolds employs the Poetics in his work at a time when the work was, as Micha Lazarus has shown, increasingly important to English audiences.9 Admittedly, explicit The Oratio in Laudem Artis Poeticae was not included in the first edition of Rainolds’ Orationes duodecim, printed in 1614; it was first attributed to Rainolds in 1619, and William Ringler celebrated the work as a great achievement in poetics in a modern translation in 1940. Since then, however, J.W. Binns convincingly identified the Oratio in Laudem Artis Poeticae as the work of Henry Dethick. See Rainolds [1940], 1–23; Binns [1975], 199–216; [1990], 444–7; Rainolds [1614]; and [1619], 233–72. 6  Barish [1981], 83. 7  See Chapter 2, pp. 95–119. 8  Gosson [1974], 160; and Ringler [1972], 8–9. 9  Micha Lazarus illustrates at length how important the Poetics was in the development of English poetics, arguing convincingly that the work circulated much earlier than is generally thought. See Lazarus [2015]; [2016].

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references to the Poetics were relatively rare in England, just as obvious references to the Poetics are sporadic in Rainolds’ work at large. But the same might be said of most sixteenth-century readers of Aristotle’s Poetics. Put simply, it was often difficult for readers to determine how or why, to say nothing of where or when, to cite the Stagirite’s often-perplexing meditations on poetry and philosophy. Aristotle’s Poetics nevertheless maintains an abiding influence over Rainolds’ treatments of probability and persuasion as well as tragedy, enactment, and spectacle. Moreover, Rainolds was well versed in a foundational body of critical literature, including commentaries on the Poetics by Robortello and Vettori. Few of his English contemporaries could claim the same familiarity. Before Rainolds, Sir John Cheke, the first Regius Professor of Greek and (later) Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, used the Poetics to clarify controversial points of ancient Greek pronunciation.10 Moreover, Roger Ascham testifies that he, Cheke, and the academic dramatist Thomas Watson, “for that part of trew Imitation, had many pleasant talkes together, in comparing the preceptes of Aristotle and Horace de Arte Poetica, with the examples of Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca.”11 Sir Philip Sidney gleaned key insights from the Poetics, or at least from period commentaries on the Poetics—claiming, for instance, that poetry is “an art of imitation,” as “Aristotle termeth it in the word mimesis”; that poetry, because it addresses “the universal consideration,” is “more Philosophicall and more studiously serious then History”; and that “the stage should always represent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle’s precept and common reason, but one day.”12 William Scott drew more consistently from the Poetics than Sidney as he composed The Model of Poesy, which contains some of the earliest translations of Aristotle’s work into English.13 And John Case, arguably “the chief representative of the first generation of the Aristotelian revival” in Elizabethan Oxford, certainly knew the Poetics, even if he seldom reflects on tragedy or poetics in general across his influential presentations of Aristotelian logic.14 But Rainolds, more than any of his English contemporaries, foregrounded the rhetorical and dialectical work of tragedy in the Poetics, bridging the gap between an archive of learned tragedy and the logical resources of the Aristotelian Organon. Rainolds never employs the Poetics as Sidney, Ascham, Scott, or his Oxford contemporary George Peele do, as an instructional work detailing how to write poetry.15 Yet it is certainly not the case, as Marvin Herrick suggests, 10  Herrick [1930], 14–18; Bryson [2004]. 11  Ascham [1570], 57r–57v. 12  Sidney [1989], 217, 223, 243. 13  For instance, Scott translates Aristotle’s treatment of catharsis, where a tragedy is “a personating poem, solemnly and sadly handling great and unhappy actions, by fear and compassion to purge outrageous and cruel affections.” Gavin Alexander claims that Scott “looks more closely at those ideas and passages that Sidney had drawn on, but also develops his own reading of [the Poetics]. On many points his is the first English account we have.” Scott [2013], 23, xlv. 14 Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England [1983], 222, 124–38; and Boas [1914], 228–9. 15  Peele—a prominent poet and playwright, William Gager’s friend, and William Shakespeare’s likely collaborator—claimed to “have followed the precepts of Aristotle and the example of the best poets” in composing his minor epic Pareus (1585), a poetic meditation on William Parry’s desperate plot to assassinate Elizabeth. Peele followed Aristotle insofar as he “faithfully adhered to the general



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that “we have no reason to suppose that even the great Reynolds [sic] studied the Poetics,” or that “the Christian piety which did not permit him to condone such immoral productions as ‘stage-playes,’ would not have permitted him to condone Aristotle’s emphasis upon the drama.”16 On the contrary, in citing the Poetics as well as current commentaries on the Poetics, Rainolds affirmed the rigor and precision of tragedy, its apodeictic and inferential import, and its philosophical provenance. While his contemporaries read the Poetics to learn how to write a poem, or to defend poetry, Rainolds recruits Aristotle as an anti-theatrical writer, suspicious of histrionic performance and spectacle. Shakespeare himself understood what was at stake in Rainolds’ tragic vision. He was certainly familiar with the Oxford debates of the 1590s concerning acting and spectacle, and the account of tragedy in Hamlet draws directly from these arguments between Rainolds, William Gager, and Alberico Gentili. The Oxford controversy hinged on two principal points. First, the matter of stage-plays themselves—namely, whether theatrical performances were reputable entertainments or posed grave moral dangers to actors and audiences alike. Second, the related matter of mendacia, where the parties involved debated whether lies or untruths were ever permissible, particularly those that serve a political or strategic purpose and that are maintained in accordance with duty or in good will (i.e. mendacia officiosa). For Rainolds and Gentili these issues are inextricable, as they are in Hamlet where Shakespeare broaches both topics in succession. When Rainolds “appears” in Hamlet—that is, when the character Reynaldo emerges at the outset of Act II in the Second Quarto (1604/1605)—his task is to spread strategic falsehoods among the Danes in Paris in the hope of discovering Laertes’ actual indiscretions. “See you now/ Your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth,” Polonius instructs his servant Reynaldo, “And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,/ With windlasses and with assays of bias,/ By indirections find directions out” (II.i.59–63).17 In other words, Shakespeare’s Reynaldo traffics in mendacia officiosa, propounding precisely the type of untruths that Rainolds explicitly rejects. Shakespeare proceeds to examine the resources of tragedy itself in Hamlet II.ii and III.ii. Like Rainolds, Hamlet employs tragedy—in this case, The Murder of Gonzago, or The Mousetrap—to a purpose. Tragedy is a forensic tool that Hamlet attempts to use. Yet where Rainolds insists on the rhetorical and dialectical perfection of tragedy, and sees histrionic action and spectacle as elements that degrade tragedy’s effect, Shakespeare explores the forensic capacities of spectacle, whereby “guilty creatures sitting at a play/ Have by the very cunning of the scene/ Been struck so to the soul that presently/ They have proclaimed their malefactions” (II.ii.524–7). As he directs our attention to tragedy Shakespeare expands the register of licit tragic resources to include not outline of events,” save for some “episodes [ἐπεισόδια], as the Greeks call them,” which he “invented and inserted” into the work “for the sake of elegance and delight”; he added nothing, however, that was “inconsistent with verisimilitude, or the nature of my story.” Peele [1995], 176–7; Vickers [2002], 148–243. 16  Herrick [1930], 22–3. 17  References to Hamlet appear in the text by Act, Scene, and line number. Unless otherwise indicated, I cite Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor’s edition of the Second Quarto. See Shakespeare [2006].

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only plot and diction but also spectacle, “passionate speech” (II.ii.369–70) and “passionate action” (III.ii.128). This chapter takes shape in five sections. In the first section, I recount the theatrical controversy at Oxford in the 1590s, particularly as Rainolds and Gentili expand the discussion beyond theater to include mendacia and mendacia officiosa. Given the origins and vicissitudes of the controversy, it is clear that theirs is not a debate over poetics in any limited imaginative sense. It is rather an argument over the ethics of fiction in public life, an argument concerning the use of mendacia and the extent to which theater is, as Gentili suggests, a useful species of falsehood. For Rainolds, this is not the case; under no circumstances are lies or falsehoods beneficial. Rejecting Gentili’s account of mendacia officiosa, Rainolds trains his critical eye, rather, on enactment itself. Rainolds began his protracted meditation on enactment as early as the 1570s, when he simultaneously devoted his attention to Aristotelian rhetoric and Reformed theology. I explore this early career in the second section, tracing the development of Rainolds’ thought from his early lectures on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, delivered during his tenure as Greek Reader at Corpus, to the onset of the controversy in 1592. The Poetics was particularly important as Rainolds collated rhetoric, dialectic, and poetics; here tragedy emerges, long before the Oxford controversy, as an exacting forensic tool that bears more in common with philosophy and rhetoric than the corrupt and corrupting arts of spectacle and stage-play. In the third section, I attend to the problems of spectacle and histrionic acting in the Poetics to illustrate how and why Rainolds recruits Aristotle against stageplaying. Aristotle’s treatment of “enactment” is ambiguous in the Poetics, particularly where he claims that tragedies employ “the mode of enactment, not narrative” [δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι᾿ ἀπαγγελίας] at 1449b.26 but nonetheless marks the distinction between enactment and spectacle.18 For Rainolds, this is an invitation to disparage spectacle and stage-playing, both foreign to poetry, and to endorse a recitative notion of enactment culled from rhetoric rather than the histrionic arts. Thus tragedy, in its original, philosophical sense, is not “played” as much as it is “recited,” foregrounding its rhetorical provenance as well as its dialectical use. Aristotle errs when he assumes that stage-playing is essential to tragedy, a misguided attempt to accommodate his philosophy to the capacities of the vulgar at the expense of rigor and precision. Spectacle and stage-playing are not only sinful and suspect historically. They distract readers and auditors from arguments themselves in tragedy. In the fourth and fifth sections, I turn to Hamlet and demonstrate, first, that Shakespeare was well aware of the Oxford debates and, second, that he offered a vigorous and convincing defense of theater in return. Not only is Shakespeare’s Reynaldo a reference to Rainolds, Hamlet’s forensic use of tragedy respects the Aristotelian philosophical mandate that Rainolds takes such care to advance. Whereas Rainolds argues the depravity of spectacle and stage-playing, however, Hamlet (whom Kathy Eden accurately identifies as “An Aristotelian in the tradition 18  AP, 46–7. See also AP, 34–5 [1448a.23, 27]; and Robortello [1968], 53.



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of Sidney”) recognizes that these histrionic elements are indispensable to effective dramatic mimesis.19 The dumb show preceding The Murder of Gonzago is ineffective, in part, because it eschews the rich resources of spectacle and stage-playing available to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Rainolds’ vision of tragedy is ineffective because he fundamentally misunderstands the irreducibly histrionic elements of nature as well as the uses of falsehood. To adopt an Aristotelian idiom, Rainolds and Shakespeare argue over the “soul of tragedy,” the ψυχή or animus tragoediae outlined in the Poetics (1450a.38), as well as its purchase in worldly affairs. S P E C I E S O F F I C T I O N : “ T H E AT E R - S I G H T S & S TA G E - P L AY E S ” A N D M E N D AC I A O F F I C I O S A The quarrel at Oxford in the early 1590s over spectacle, stage-playing, and mendacia ranks among the most significant theatrical controversies in early modern England. The story is often recounted: Rainolds was invited to attend the Shrovetide Play at Christ Church on Sunday February 5, 1592, William Gager’s Ulysses Redux; Rainolds declined the invitation, and when pressed by Thomas Thornton, the Canon of Christ Church, he responded with a detailed explanation.20 By this point, Rainolds had already called in print for further Reformation of Oxford, in a prefatory address to his 1579 Theses. There Rainolds delivered a rousing address, aiming to “Stirre up exercise of learning” and “Destroy those wanton lusts that draw men from studie”—not only “idleness, a sweete evill,” and “delicacie, the baite of Venus,” but also a host of profane activities endemic to student life: “the ryote of feasts, the vanities of apparell, unhonest pastimes, unseasonable drinkings, the plagues of stageplayers, the sights and shewes of Theaters” [original emphasis].21 He elaborated these brief objections in his private letter to Thornton. In turn, Gager (a Doctor of Civil Law and accomplished poet in his own right) included the character Momus in future performances, a satirical figure who voiced criticism à la Rainolds and who was subsequently ridiculed and refuted before an Oxford audience. Rainolds believed that Gager was mocking him directly, that Momus was meant to be a caricature of Rainolds. A series of letters in English passed between them in which Gager defended academic drama and Rainolds disparaged theatrical performance at large. After Gager ceased communication with Rainolds in Fall 1593, the Oxford jurist and Regius Chair of Civil Law Alberico Gentili took up the correspondence, in Latin, which persisted until Rainolds sent the final letter on March 12, 1594.22 A version of the letters between 19  Eden [1986], 180. 20  Virtually every history of Elizabethan Oxford that deals with theater or Rainolds recounts this story. See, among others: Dent [1983], 189–91; Boas [1914], 229–51; Young, “William Gager’s Defence of the Academic Stage” (1916), 593–638; Young, “An Elizabethan Defence of the Academic Stage” (1916), 103–24; Norland [2009], 180–92; and McCabe [1993], 112–16. 21  See Rainolds [1584], 678; [1580], 30. 22  The last four missives of the correspondence between Rainolds and Gentili were never printed, and appear only in MS. Corpus Christi College Oxon. 352. fol. 213–307.

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Rainolds and his two interlocutors was published in Middleburg in 1599 as Th’overthrow of stage-playes. In these letters Rainolds vehemently opposes the public playhouses as well as school and university performances. Drawing heavily upon Scripture, accounts of law in the ancient world, and the work of the Church Fathers, Rainolds argues that “Stage-players are infamous by the civill lawe,” regardless of whether or not they were remunerated—in other words, plays have long been subject to reproach, and the best governors and wisest citizens since antiquity have held players in righteous contempt.23 Moreover, Rainolds insisted that God “forbiddeth a man to put on womans raiment,” which illegitimated cross-dressing and mimetic forms of enactment popular among Elizabethan audiences; not only was it sinful for a man or boy to behave basely or effeminately, but such performances also enticed players and audiences alike to lust and wickedness.24 Lastly, theatrical productions needlessly consumed precious time and resources. To stage such wanton pastimes “is mony cast away, and addeth wastfulnes to wantonnes.”25 Here Rainolds rejects earlier defenses of theater at Oxford and Cambridge as well as among the Reformed.26 In other words, Rainolds eschews Melanchthon’s and Martin Bucer’s efforts to distinguish between honesti ludi and depraved entertainments and, breaking Reformed precedent at Oxford, tacitly criticizes arguments on behalf of drama which Lawrence Humphrey and many men of his generation endorsed. Rainolds’ sharp critique of spectacle and stage-playing, manifest in Th’overthrow of stage-playes, belongs to a new generation of Puritan scholarship and polemic at Oxford and beyond.27 However, to saddle Rainolds with an uncomplicated “anti-theatrical prejudice” is to miss crucial aspects of the epistolary debates that took shape at Oxford between 1592 and 1594. First, none of the disputants explicitly approved of the public theaters. Gentili readily acknowledges that Rainolds and his fellow theologians are right to target the public stage, conceding that the theologians’ arguments “against those mercenary public players and actors of undignified plots are not insubstantial [nihili non sint].”28 Gentili does not praise stage-players [ludii]; his 23  ROverthrow, 4 [emphasis original]. 24  ROverthrow, 8–9, 18–19 [emphasis original]. See Levine [1994], 10–25, 96–7. 25  Vettori actually includes a brief note on the costs of spectacle in his commentary on the Poetics; although he is not explicitly critical, Vettori does suggest that the expense of spectacle sets it apart from other aspects of tragic production. ROverthrow, 24; Vettori [1573], 132. 26  Rainolds breaks with his own intellectual formation as well. When he initially arrived at Oxford, the young Rainolds held no ostensible reservations about theater or acting. In fact, as a student at Corpus Christi College, Rainolds played the part of Hippolyta in a September 1566 production of Richard Edwardes’ Palamon and Arcyte, a spectacular performance staged for Queen Elizabeth and her entourage—a notable beginning for such a vocal opponent of stagecraft and transvestite playing. According to actor Miles Windsor, who was present at the occasion, the play was “acted with very great applause,” and the Queen and company were evidently moved by the spectacle and the performances. ROverthrow, 45; Boas [1914], 103–7; Elliot [2003], 31, 37, 33. 27  Dent [1983], 103–25, 242–3. Daniel Blank’s recent studies of academic theater are illuminating, particularly where he identifies trends and tensions internal to the collegiate university culture at Oxford across generations. See Blank [2017]. 28  ROverthrow, 169: “ut quas contra histriones illos publice mercenarios, & indignarum fabularum actores habent, eae nihili non sint.”



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treatment only seems laudatory, he claims, in comparison to Rainolds’ furious denunciation, which Gentili describes as bombast spoken under the influence of Seneca—aping, in this case, the tone of the deliberative and often pugnacious Suasoriae.29 Gentili and Gager are advocates of academic theater but not popular theater, a distinction they share with many of their Oxford contemporaries. John Case, for instance, divided “Stage Plays” [Ludi Scenici] between those “common and popular plays which are represented more for scurrility than propriety” and Ludi Academici, “comedies and tragedies instituted to the purpose of honest recreation” in the schools, colleges, and universities.30 Only the latter are licit, and then only under certain conditions.31 Even Gager readily admits to the depravity of public plays, and objects to Rainolds insofar as he applies “all thos reproches to us, which are truly spoken agaynst Histriones.”32 “I denye that we are to be termed Scenici, or Histriones,” Gager claims, for: we are unlike them in the ende and effectes of Playinge. for they came upon the stage neyther of a devowte mynd toward their false Godds, nor of a magnificent towardes the peeple (for eyther of thes had byn then in them thought commendable) but of a lewd, vast, dissolute, wicked, impudent, prodigall, monstrous humor, wherof no dowte ensued greate corruption of manners in them selves, to saye nothing here of the behowlders. We contrarywise doe it to recreate owre selves, owre House, and the better parte of the Universitye, with some learned Poême or other.33

Gager is ostensibly as hostile to public players as Rainolds is. Like Gentili, Gager defends the actors and spectators of academic plays, but not mercenary players or the vulgar expectations of popular audiences.34 But the Oxford debates were not limited to theater. As the controversy ran on, and Gager passed the baton to Gentili, the issues of players and playing became increasingly associated with arguments over mendacia and mendacia officiosa: lies, and falsehoods or fictions that are maintained in accordance with duty or in good will. That is to say, neither Rainolds nor Gentili were concerned with theater for its own sake but with the ethics of fiction in public life. It is easy for modern readers 29  ROverthrow, 170: “Ego ludios non laudo, sed tu cum convicio ludis genere istoc loquendi laudatissimo, & per suasorias Senecae persuasissimo tibi.” 30 Case [1585], 183: “Communes & populares, qui ad scurrilitatem potius quam comitatem referuntur”; “Academici, quales sunt comoediae ac tragoediae recreationis honestae causa institutae, & hae sunt licita.” 31  Case [1585], 183: “Propter memoriam antiquorum temporum, quam ad vivum representant; Propter multiplicem scientiam rerum, quam in se comprehendunt; Propter magnam experientiam, qua nos exornant; Propter vim vocis, gestus, & affectus, quam optime depingunt; Propter delectabilem affabilitatis & comitatis usum, quem graphice ante oculos proponunt.” 32 William Gager’s July 31, 1592 letter appears in Young, “William Gager’s Defence of the Academic Stage” (1916), 607. 33  Gager also insists that, “We differ from them altogether in the manner bothe of settinge owte Playes, and of acting them. thay did it with excessyve charge; we thriftily warely, and almost beggarly; they acted theire Playes in an other sorte then we doe, or can, or well knowe howe; but so exquisytly, and carefully, that we may seeme, compared with them, eyther for skill, or diligence, rather Recitare, which [Rainolds] doe not dislike, then Agere.” Young, “William Gager’s Defence of the Academic Stage” (1916), 613–14. 34 Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 6–10; van der Molen [1968], 259–60.

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to lose sight of this, as the attendant controversy over the morality of useful fictions and falsehoods is obscured in the printed version of the debates, in English. Published in the Netherlands some five years after Rainolds’ last letter to Gentili, Th’overthrow of stage-playes is only a partial account of the controversy.35 But mendacia officiosa are more important and central to the later debates between Rainolds and Gentili than Th’overthrow of stage-playes makes clear. Other works—namely, Gentili’s Disputationes Duae and Rainolds’ further letters—foreground the enduring connections among these species of fiction: theater and mendacia.36 Rainolds and Gentili cited established debates over mendacia and dissimulation in their dispute over stage-playing and spectacles, theatrical elements which threaten to obscure otherwise edifying works of learned drama. Since antiquity, authorities like Augustine and Aquinas had considered the morality of mendacia.37 Among their own Oxford contemporaries, John Case treated mendacia and ludi scenici in succession in his Speculum Moralium Quaestionum in Universam Ethicen Aristotelis (1585), asking “Whether one is permitted to lie?” before ultimately denying that fabulae poëticae (along with irony and “dissimulation on behalf of the life of a man or the health of a state” [dissimulatio pro vita hominis aut salute civitatis]) are species of mendacia because “in these there is no intention of injuring or deceiving another.”38 Rainolds and Gentili both affirm the analogy between mendacia and stage-playing and in the process tie this ancient debate directly to tragedy by way of the Poetics. Initially, in his 1593 Commentatio ad Legem III Codicis de Professoribus et Medicis Gentili unambiguously suggests that, “Poets are doctors [medici]. They certainly cure through the emotions in a powerful way. And so Aristotle makes a note of that in defining tragedy,” a direct reference to katharsis in the Poetics.39 Citing Aristotle directly, Gentili affirms that poetry has a restorative or therapeutic power, and as such it is useful to the state as well as conducive to the health of the body.40 Insofar as he follows Aristotle’s Poetics, this is particularly true of tragedy. And tragedy, Gentili affirms, is salubrious when it is enacted. Spectacle, which includes stage-playing: serves the purpose of curing the vices of a depraved nature, and of mankind. Just as doctors, and some others, do not shun a serviceable lie [nec a mendacio refugiunt officioso]. 35  Rainolds is not responsible for the title page or the prefatory address of Th’overthrow of stageplayes. They are rather the work of the Middleburg printer Richard Schilders. That is not to say that Rainolds did not endorse the printed edition, “Wherein is manifestly proved, that it is not onely unlawfull to bee an Actor, but a beholder of those vanities,” but only that the 1599 edition (and subsequent editions) abstract the letters from the Oxford context. See Wilson [1912], 65–134. For the full correspondence between Rainolds, Gentili, and Gager, see MS. Corpus Christi College Oxon. 352. 36 In the Disputationes Duae—a work dedicated to his patron Tobie Matthew, the Bishop of Durham—Gentili considered the issues together in his successive orations De actoribus & spectatoribus fabularum non notandis and De abusu mendacii. Moreover, the discussion of mendacia officiosa figures prominently the unpublished correspondence between Rainolds and Gentili, which is probably why the remaining letters were not included in Th’overthrow of stage-playes, focused as it is on stage plays and players. See, for instance, Rainolds’ discussion of irony, MS. Corpus Christi College Oxon. 352. fol. 226–9. 37  Augustine [1952]; Aquinas [1972], 146–83. 38  Case [1585], 174–9. 39  AG, 238, 268. 40  AG, 238, 268.



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And so these doctors will not here draw back from their indecorous imitations. Hippocrates writes that bodily diseases are cured by shows [per spectacula]. An orator must quite often mimic those characters [personae induendae], yet he does not incur any disgrace, since it was necessary.41

As Gentili draws from an eminent commentary tradition exploring the medical effects of tragic katharsis in Aristotle’s Poetics, he also introduces mendacia officiosa into the discussion. Just as medical doctors employ mendacia officiosa and spectacles to heal ill patients, so do tragic poets avail themselves of “indecorous imitations”— stage-playing, spectacle, and the like—to cure spectators of vices. Enactment, spectacle, and indecorous imitation are means of treatment. When used appropriately, stage-playing and spectacle are analogous to mendacia officiosa. Melanchthon describes the fundamental relationship between poetic fabulae and mendacia officiosa in his Definitiones Multarum Appellationum, Quarum in Ecclesia Usus Est (1553): It is a lie [mendacium] to speak one thing or to signify it by means of gesture, and to mean another thing, either impudently or with the desire of doing harm. Thus I do not call those figures “lies” [mendacia] by which something that it is unnecessary to declare is concealed with probable cause, as when Rahab denied that the spies were at her house (Joshua 2:3). Such figures are called “mendacia officiosa.” Stories and poems are related to these, all of which can be described as figures or imitations.42

Melanchthon’s definition sets the terms for the debate between Gentili and Rainolds. He attends to gesture as well as speech, emphasizes intention, and uses poetry to mark distinctions between shameful mendacia and licit mendacia officiosa. With Melanchthon’s treatment of mendacia in mind, Gentili entertains the idea that “in regard to honour and dishonor, actions do not differ so much in themselves as in their end and object,” an Aristotelian maxim that underwrites the investigations in his correspondence with Rainolds as well as his later Disputationes Duae.43 He is cautious, however, of privileging ends over means. Rather than stating outright that “It is not evil to abuse evil” [Abuti malo non est malum], Gentili urges readers to distinguish between species of mendacia, attending to different intentions and uses of language.44 Just as he criticizes theologians for whom any mendacium is sinful, he refuses to say all mendacia officiosa are good. Instead Gentili illustrates how neither the authors nor interpreters of the Corpus Juris Civilis flee from mendacia officiosa, since many human and divine laws permit men to lie or deceive [mentiri] under certain conditions, and that physicians employ mendacia 41  AG, 247, 269. 42  Melanchthon’s definitions were initially appended to his 1553 Loci Communes and, later, printed on their own. They were widely available and their importance, as with most things Melanchthonian, has been largely neglected by scholars of early modernity. Gentili quotes Melanchthon’s definition in full to support his claims in his Disputationes Duae. Melanchthon [1556], d3v; [1553], 715; and Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 179–80. 43 Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 144: “Ad honestum, & non honestum, non tam discrepant actiones per se, quam fine, & cuius caussa.” Gentili quotes Aristotle, Politics Vii.xiii.5 [1333a.9–11]. 44 Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 192.

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officiosa to great effect.45 Citing Melanchthon and Case, Gentili asserts that “the  dutiful deception is not really a deception” [Mendacium officiosum non est mendacium].46 And where Melanchthon turns to Rahab to illustrate his point, Gentili raises the stakes with a choice reference to Christ. Even Christ, who is said to have “imitated ignorance, and feigned human emotions,” may have trafficked in mendacia officiosa when he meditated upon his death—an end that he only suffered as a man, but not as God.47 Gentili ultimately denies this but (in a brilliant case of occupatio or apophasis) demonstrates at length that Christ’s manner of  speaking, accommodated to audiences and situations, is not deceptive but illuminating. In De abusu mendacii, orators, philosophers, and poets employ mendacia officiosa to organize and draw together arguments, accommodate difficult lessons to hostile audiences, and seize upon their goodwill in order to teach and persuade. Gentili’s Christ works by similar means. Rainolds refuses to accept that falsehoods or fictions—that is, mendacia or stage-plays—may be effectively employed for purposes of accommodation or amelioration. This poses a logical problem. Gentili, he argues, correctly affirms that nature (including human nature) is fallen and corrupted. Moreover, Gentili admits that neither lying nor stage-playing is “an honest matter in itself.” Gentili errs, then, in proposing that these dishonest means of accommodation, however “necessary” because of our corrupt nature, can be used to depict and correct vice.48 Corruption cannot heal corruption. Rainolds thus prickles at Gentili’s quotation from Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, that “It is a beautiful falsehood, that benefits the author and does no harm to the hearer” [Pulchrum mendacium, cum auctori commodat, & audienti non nocet], and deems scandalous the verse of an unidentified poet, “Quum vitia prosunt, peccat recte facit”—that is, “When vices do good, he who sins does rightly.”49 He ultimately accuses Gentili of teaching that “the abuse of evils is not evil, but good,” a tenuous moral justification of the benefits of depraved mendacia and theatrical spectacles alike.50 As early as his lectures on the Rhetoric, Rainolds roundly dismisses the idea that evil can be cured with evil, arguing that leading pagan and Christian authorities all condemned the notion that evil means might be employed to pious ends.51 This is not merely a matter of 45 Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 153 [quote attributed to Alciati]: “Scimus, plerosque casus esse, quibus omni humano, divinoque iure fas, & ius est mentiri. Nec in speciem quidem delicti cadit mendacium, quum quis citra dolum malum, & fraudem mentitur. vel quum quis tum ex officio id facit, dum suum, aut alterius sanguinem redimit.” 46 Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 185. 47 Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 186–90: “Christum simulasse ignorantiam, & humanos mentitum esse affectus.” 48  Rainolds draws upon Gentili’s 1593 Commentatio as well as his treatment of mendacia in De Jure Belli Commentationes Tres [1589]. ROverthrow, 166: “quam quod histrioniam colendam esse statuis, non tanquam rem honestam, sed tanquam necessariam naturae depravatae & medendis hominum vitiis”; Gentili [1589], C3v–D2v. 49  ROverthrow, 166; Gentili [1589], D1r. 50  ROverthrow, 167: “abusus malorum (ut tu doces) malus non est, sed bonus.” For the quote from Heliodorus see Heliodorus [1596], 50; and [Heliodorus] [1569], 16r: “For that manner of a lie is tolerable whiche profitethe the Inventoure, and hurtethe not the hearer.” 51  ROxford, 346–7, 354–5.



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­ orality but also of method. “True and good things,” Rainolds argues, “can be m handled with more eloquence and greater probability than false and bad things”; nevertheless, as Aristotle makes clear in the Poetics, “some falsehoods are more probable than some truths.”52 As students must attend to species of proof, argumentation, probability, and necessity, Rainolds urges the study of rhetoric, dialectic and, by extension, poetics. Gentili, in turn, reprimands Rainolds for raising the issue despite the fact that he does not adequately understand either what an officiosum mendacium is, or the end to which Gentili employs this term in his jurisprudential works.53 In his treatment of the law of war, Gentili introduces species of falsehood or mendacia— including strategy or art of words [dolus verborum], ironia, jokes, and mendacia officiosa—to determine the conditions under which one might legitimately deceive enemies as well as whether falsehoods are licit in contracts and covenants.54 Rainolds, Gentili claims, is entirely ignorant of the debate among jurists, and is wrong to exercise authority in another academic field.55 Gentili, after all, is best known for his curt statement: “Be silent, theologians, in another’s affair” [Silete theologi in munere alieno].56 The message is clear. Theologians have little or no authority in jurisprudential disputations, and when they overstep their disciplinary boundaries they often obscure or misconstrue matters that are beyond their intellectual grasp. He makes a similar point in his Commentatio, that “as I am greatly influenced by the authority of theologians in matters of religion, so am I not greatly 52  ROxford, 156–7. 53  ROverthrow, 168. 54 Gentili, De Iure Belli Libri III [1599], 239–49; [1589], C1v–D2v; van der Molen [1968], 140–1. 55  Much of the debate concerning stage-players and mendacia officiosa is also evidence of a struggle among Oxford factions and faculties for authority and influence. The controversy doubtlessly escalated because of the personal enmities and rivalries involved. The letters between Rainolds and Gentili offer a window into institutional life at Oxford, where the issues range from disciplinary conflicts concerning the place of theology to petty disagreements over appointments and advancements within the University. This is the case when Rainolds reminds Gentili that he had denounced histrionic actors and spectacular performances “before you were occupying that chair from which you praise players” [prius quam tu cathedram istam, ex qua ludios laudas, occupares]. Prior to Gentili’s appointment as Regius Professor, Rainolds had evidently “argued that [Gentili] was disqualified for the chair by the Italian levity of his character which manifested itself in vainglory and adulation.” Gentili, in turn, seizes on this language, and the rumor of Rainolds’ opposition to his appointment: “I do not ‘hold that chair,’ I possess it by the good blessings of the best sovereign and by the generosity of the most learned and humane” [Ego cathedram istam non occupo, quam bonis adprobantibus teneo de principis optima, & humanissimae largitate]. It is duly important to note the personal ties binding Rainolds’ adversaries together. Gager most likely consulted Gentili on precise matters of Roman Law; moreover, Gager was already a popular playwright at Oxford when the controversy began, and was close friends with some of the most prominent intellectuals at the university—for instance, John Case, John Lyly, Richard Eedes, and Matthew Gwinne. Case and Gentili both contributed prefatory poems to the 1592 edition of Gager’s Meleager. ROverthrow, 165, 170; Barton, “The Faculty of Law” [1986], 265–6; “The King’s Readers” [1986], 290; and Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England [1983], 126–7. Daniel Blank’s work is particularly illuminating here as well. See Blank [2017]. 56  Gentili [1589], 92. See also the conference proceedings published as Silete theologi in munere alieno: Alberico Gentili e la Seconda Scolastica: Ferronato and Bianchin [2011]; and Malcolm [2010], 127–45.

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influenced by them in matters of morals or politics.”57 He also says as much in his earlier letters to Rainolds: “Theology is the mistress of faith and life,” Gentili admits, “but not of all life, nor is every part of the discussion of God entirely yours.”58 In response Rainolds devotes much of his next letter (dated August 5, 1593) to the scope of theology and the limits of law and philosophy.59 The debate over the morality and legality of useful or dutiful fictions was particularly salient at the outset of the 1590s, as authorities dealt with volatile species of doli verborum and mendacia officiosa—namely, forms of equivocation, mental reservation, and Nicodemism among English Jesuits and “Church-papists” at large.60 During Elizabeth’s 1592 visit to Oxford (where she castigated Rainolds in person for his “obstinate preciseness”), theologians disputed the topical question “Whether it be lawful to dissemble in cause of religion?”61 In his oration before the royal audience, the presiding divine Herbert Westphaling, Bishop of Hereford, “allowed a secrecy, but without a dissimulation; a policy, but not without piety, lest men taking too much of the serpent, have too little of the dove.”62 The question “caused much attention from the courtly auditory,” probably because of its immediate relevance in discussions of conformity and recusancy.63 And the debate concerning mendacia officiosa ranged beyond English Catholicism. The Marprelate controversy raised similar questions concerning the pious employment of fictions and falsehoods, and no less an authority than Rainolds testified that if any man “utter a truth, mingled with whatsoever else, it is not reason that that, which is of God, should be condemned for that which is of man; no more then the doctrine of the resurection should be reproved because it was maintained and held by the Pharises.”64 No fiction, however unseemly or inappropriate, can mar or alter things indubitably true.

57  AG, 247, 269. 58  ROverthrow, 169: “Theologia fidei, & vitae magistra est. sed non omnis vitae. nec omnis pars sermonum Dei in solidum vestra est.” 59  Despite his protestations against theology, Gentili makes substantial revisions to his commentary on mendacia officiosa based on Rainolds’ objections. See, for instance, Gentili’s later treatment of Augustine and Aquinas in De Iure Belli, where he extends the earlier Commentationes to include these figures. Gentili, De Iure Belli Libri III [1599], 246. 60  Walsham [1993]. 61  On this visit Elizabeth (who blocked Rainolds’ appointment to the Regius Chair of Theology in 1589 and opposed his later advancement as well) “schooled” Rainolds in person “for his obstinate preciseness, willing him to follow her laws, and not run before them”—a lesson, incidentally, that Rainolds seems to have “forgotten . . . when he came to Hampton Court, where he received a better schooling by King James, an. 1603.” Elizabeth certainly censured Rainolds for his puritanical commitments—he denied episcopacy by divine right, for instance, and maintained the legality and morality of divorce. “The Queen’s Entertainment at Oxford, 1592,” [1823], 146; Rainolds, The Judgement of Doctor Reignolds concerning episcopacy . . . [1641]; [1609]. 62  Elizabeth apparently asked Westphaling twice to “cut it short,” but he nevertheless continued to read a long “set methodical Speech,” delaying the Queen’s own speech until the next morning. “The Queen’s Entertainment at Oxford, 1592,” [1823], 146. 63  See Lake and Questier [2011], 49–58, 111–28. 64 Rainolds, Dr. Reignolds His Letter . . . [1641], 2.



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R A I N O L D S A N D OX F O R D A R I S TOT E L I A N I S M For Rainolds, however, indubitably true things are very rare and easily obscured. Most arguments are merely probable. This is the chief insight of his Oxford lectures on Aristotle’s Rhetoric as well as the critical observation that underwrites his objections to spectacle and stage-playing—namely, that “some falsehoods are more probable than some truths,” a distillation of the Poetics, in which the best tragic plots relate “the kinds of things that might occur and are possible in terms of probability or necessity,” the reason that poetry (and tragedy in particular) “is more philosophical and more elevated than history” [1450b.36–1451a.8].65 Aristotle demonstrates how exemplary tragic fabulae bring dialectical precision to the arts of language. The distinction between fact and fiction is not nearly as important in the Poetics as are the distinctions between probable and improbable elements of fabulae. With Aristotle’s treatment of tragedy in mind, Rainolds declares that “the form of actual and verisimilar reasoning is the same.”66 In other words, orators and philosophers should approach probabilities in the same way, whether they are dealing with legal disputes, natural events, or tragic fabulae. The form of reasoning is the same. Whether the philosopher calls the arguments “probable” or the orator calls them “persuasive,” arguments, causes, and proofs take shape in similar ways in both nature and art.67 As Lawrence D. Green puts it in his Introduction, Rainolds refuses easy distinctions between scientific and rhetorical reasoning. For Rainolds, “All reasoning about worldly affairs is probable reasoning and is demonstrative in the sense that all reasoning demonstrates.”68 Few if any things can be known for certain. Even dialectic deals primarily in probability, presenting arguments for assessment and not simply confirming what is certain. Rainolds is skeptical of universals, claiming that “those ‘universals’ long acknowledged by us ‘in the elements’ and ‘in the heavens,’ either times or places have finally shown that they cannot be universally confirmed.”69 All human reasoning is subject to our “corrupted judgments and perverted wills.”70 Rhetoric and dialectic are to a degree apodeictic, “suitable for teaching and demonstrating a point,” but as such orators and philosophers alike deal in probabilities.71 Only faith is certain. As Rainolds presented Aristotle’s Rhetoric to a generation of students at Oxford he foregrounded original sin and the ineffability of God’s will—neither of which, of course, appear in the Rhetoric itself. His approach to the Greek text, which he frequently revises and censures, reflects the scope of his training. Rainolds discovered Aristotle and Protestantism simultaneously. It is likely that he began his studies as a Catholic, like his uncle Thomas and his brothers Jerome and Edmund,

65  Rainolds refers here to Poetics 1460a.26–7: “Things probable though impossible should be preferred to the possible but implausible”; and to Poetics 1454b.6 and 1460a.27–30, to Aristotle’s dictate “There should be nothing irrational [ἄλογον] in the events” of the tragedy, “or, failing that, it should lie outside the plot [ἔξω τοῦ μυθεύματος].” ROxford, 156–7; and AP, 54–7, 122–5, 80–3. 66  ROxford, 152–3. 67  ROxford, 202–3. 68  ROxford, 73, 202–3. 69  ROxford, 206–7. 70  ROxford, 348–9. 71  ROxford, 206–7.

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all of whom resided at Oxford.72 While his uncle and brothers were successively purged from the university, expelled for their Catholicism, John seems to have converted by the end of the 1560s. This was apparent to Reformed contemporaries like the former Reader of Humanity at Corpus Christi College, the Bishop John Jewel, who suggested that Rainolds serve as tutor to the young Richard Hooker.73 It seems, then, that Rainolds converted over the course of his studies at Corpus, a “bastion of the new learning at Oxford,” where the classical languages and cultures he learned were “intended principally for the sake of theology.”74 In this sense, Rainolds came to Aristotle and Reformed theology at the same time, and his later theological lectures and treatises, celebrated for their breadth and clarity, bear the traces of his early expertise in rhetoric and dialectic. Patently committed to scholarship and rigor, Rainolds ranks among the most influential Aristotelians at Oxford and across England at large during the sixteenth century. Indeed, Charles B. Schmitt identifies Rainolds, together with Case (“the archetypal English Aristotelian”), Richard Stanyhurst, and Everard Digby, as “the first generation of the Aristotelian revival” in England.75 That is not to say that these diverse scholars shared a mission, a method, or even an Aristotelian corpus. Instead, the Elizabethan Aristotelians tended to employ Aristotle’s work to various ends, emphasizing the limits and errors of Aristotelianism while simultaneously mining medieval and Jesuit Scholasticism and humanist textual commentary for precious intellectual resources. This is the trajectory Rainolds followed at Oxford. Rainolds received his MA in 1572 and was elected Greek Reader at Corpus the same year, a position he held from 1572 to 1578.76 In this capacity Rainolds delivered his remarkable lectures on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, to which I will turn again momentarily. Rainolds’ theological commitments intensified during his tenure as Greek Reader. He was licensed to preach in 1576 and pursued a bachelor of theology degree, which he received in January 1580. He learned Hebrew in order to read Scripture and turned his attention, increasingly, to a nascent canon of Reformed theological resources: Jean Calvin’s Institutio Christianae Religionis (1559), for instance, together with Edmund Bunny’s Compendium (1576); John 72  Feingold [2012]; and Dent [1983], 19–20. Lawrence D. Green assumes that John Rainolds was sufficiently Protestant by 1566, when he was elected a probationary fellow at Corpus Christi College. See ROxford, 26–7. While we know relatively little about his conversion, apocryphal accounts emerged during his lifetime. Rainolds’ contemporary William Alabaster imagined that the Catholic John, an effective preacher, and his younger brother William, an equally gifted preacher, converted one another simultaneously—to Protestantism and Catholicism, respectively. See Murray [2009], 43–51; and Fuller [1651], 478–80. 73  Green claims that Rainolds began tutoring Hooker in 1567, while Feingold notes only that he assumed these duties “by 1569.” ROxford, 26–7; Feingold [2012]. 74  ROxford, 13, 15. 75 Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England [1983], 221–2. 76  Richard Fox established public lectures in Greek, Latin, and theology at Corpus in 1517. If comparable lectures in Greek (the curriculum at Cardinal College or the lectures delivered by the Regius Chair in Greek, for instance) are any indication, the Corpus curriculum in Greek may have included Isocrates, Lucian, Philostratus, Homer, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, and Hesiod, in addition to Aristotle. Because philosophy professors would have lectured on Aristotle’s contributions to natural philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics, Greek professors focused attention on Aristotle’s theses on rhetoric and language. Duncan [1986], 336, 340–1, 354.



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Foxe’s “history Ecclesiastical,” the Actes and Monuments (1563); and Andreas Hyperius’ De Formandis Concionibus Sacris (1562), all of which he recommended by name in his lectures and correspondence in the 1570s.77 His recommendations are representative of the Oxford curriculum at the outset of the 1580s, which was expanded by statute in 1579 to include Alexander Nowell’s catechism (1570), the Heidelberg Catechism, and Hyperius’ Elementa Christianae Religionis (1563) as well as works by Calvin, Jewel, Bullinger, and foundational texts of the Elizabethan Church—namely, the Thirty-Nine Articles.78 But Rainolds’ theological agenda also took shape in his lectures on the Rhetoric, and he exhorted students of theology to proceed diligently from lessons in philosophy, rhetoric, and dialectic to divinity— an endeavor, he admitted, that required time and commitment: “If eloquence, if philosophie require such travaile for civill and base things . . . what shall we think that the knowledge of God, the study of divinity, desireth for the greatnesse, & for the worthines deserveth.”79 He certainly took his own advice, as he resigned as Greek Reader in 1578, turning from the “profession of artes of humanitie, [in order] that I might the better applie the studie of divinitie”; he frames this as a progression rather than a rejection, as rhetoric and dialectic enabled him to frame weighty matters of divinity, even if his earlier humanistic pursuits were “of lesse importance” than his later theological interests.80 To meet the requirements for the divinity degree, Rainolds delivered his theses at St. Mary’s Church in Oxford on July 13, 1579.81 Upon the recommendation of his de facto patron Sir Francis Walsingham, Rainolds entered into disputation with the Jesuit John Hart, debating the “head and the faith of the Church” and challenging the controversial Catholic positions endorsed by the English Seminaries at Rome and Reims.82 The published work, The summe of the conference betwene Iohn Rainoldes and Iohn Hart (1584), notable for its breadth and lucidity, was printed several times, and Rainolds emerged as a prominent voice against English Jesuits at home and abroad across the 1580s. In turn, Walsingham appointed Rainolds to a special “extraordinary” divinity lectureship at Oxford in 1586.83 Rainolds was charged by Walsingham with developing a program to counter Jesuit influence in England and abroad, a project that united

77 Rainolds, A letter of Dr. Reinolds to his friend . . . [1613], A5v–A8r; ROxford, 256–7; Feingold [2012]. 78  Dent [1983], 88, 186; Greenslade [1986], 324–9. 79 Rainolds, A letter of Dr. Reinolds to his friend . . . [1613], A8v. 80  Rainolds [1584], 661–2. 81  They were subsequently printed in Latin—the Sex theses de Sacra Scriptura, et Ecclesia Rainolds [1580], which, according to William Ringler, had the “distinction, unusual for an academic dissertation, of going through three editions”—and in English, with verse summaries. See William Ringler’s introduction to [Rainolds] [1940], 4. 82  According to Feingold, “Walsingham did not intend personally to support Rainolds in perpetuity, nor to endow the lectureship”—thus the terms of his “patronage” are complicated. Nevertheless, Walsingham continued to fund the lectureship until his death, after which Essex paid for Rainolds’ position. See Rainolds [1584], 13; and Feingold [2012]. 83  Fuller [1651], 482; [Rainolds] [1940], 4.

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otherwise diverse factions of English Protestants at Elizabethan Oxford.84 Thus Rainolds lectured on theology “thrice weekly in full term” to large audiences and wrote authoritative confutations of Roman Catholic theology and politics such as De Romanae Ecclesiae Idolatria, published at the Oxford press by Joseph Barnes in 1596.85 While his popular theology lectures were initially held at Corpus, after 1588 Rainolds moved to Queen’s College where he enjoyed the support of the provost Henry Robinson and such pupils as Henry Airay and William Hinde.86 Even after Rainolds was named Dean of Lincoln in 1593 he remained at Oxford, lecturing at Queen’s until he was appointed president of Corpus in 1598. Rainolds held this position at Queen’s at the outset of the controversy, when he famously declined the invitation to attend Gager’s Ulysses Redux. Rainolds’ contemporaries praised his sweeping acumen. He was esteemed a “singular man of infinite reading,” a “treasury of all learning, both divine and humane,” and was particularly renowned for his knowledge in Aristotelian philosophy.87 According to Fuller, Rainolds first achieved great “fame” for his lectures on Aristotle, “whose three incomparable bookes of Rhetoricke, he illustrated with so exquisite a commentary so richly fraught with all polite littrature, that as well in the commentary as in the text a man may finde that aureum flumen rerum & verborium, that golden torrent the Prince of Oratours telleth us of.”88 Fuller is careful, however, to distance Rainolds from those “wrangling Sophisters bred of the excrements of the Dunsticall Commenters upon Aristotle.”89 Rainolds, often critical of Aristotle as well as the claims of Aristotelian philosophers, is particularly eager to dispel the “Phylosophicall errours” of the Roman Catholics grounded in Aristotelianism.90 But Rainolds does not dismiss Medieval Scholasticism tout court nor does he reject contemporary logicians like Case. On the contrary, Rainolds clearly finds Aristotle and Aristotelians useful to think with, and respects the rigor and scope of Scholasticism. Rainolds even employs Aristotle’s Poetics to make this clear. Paraphrasing Poetics 1460b.32–4, he recounts how: Sophocles, the poet, (a writer of tragedies) being asked of his friend, why, when he brought in the persons of women, he made them alwaies good, whereas Euripides made them badde: because I (quoth he) doo represent women such as they should be: Euripides, such as they be. So the matter fareth betweene me and [the Scholastic theologian Melchior Cano, so important to Hart’s defense of Catholicism]. For he dooth paint out Schoolemen such as they should be: and I such as they be.91

Rainolds identifies with Euripides, and compares misguided Catholic opponents like Hart to Sophocles. Hart and company, devoted to “Schoolmen such as they should be,” cannot recognize the actual abuses of learning; they are seduced by 84 After Walsingham’s death in 1590, Essex continued to fund Rainolds’ work. Dent [1983], 145–51. 85  Greenslade [1986], 312; Rainolds [1596]. 86  Dent [1983], 171–5. 87  Fuller [1651], 477. 88  Fuller [1651], 478. 89  Fuller [1651], 478. 90  Fuller [1651], 478. 91  Rainolds also employs this anecdote in his lectures on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Gentili, moreover, incorporates the example into his later disputation De abusu mendacii, where he attributes it to the Poetics. Rainolds [1584], 110–11; ROxford, 270–1; and Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 167.



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those who “prophaned divinitie with philosophie, or rather sophistrie, and yet are called Schoole-divines.”92 Rainolds purports to expose Catholic scholarship for what it is: a tradition propounded by inexpert scholars, “following glimpses of Philosophers as perfit light,” “mistaking the scripture through faultie translations or expositions of men.”93 Hart’s ideal visions of scholarship and religion blind him to the actual corruption of the schools and the perversion of doctrine. Rainolds’ is a penetrating critique, but even as he censures his opponents for “taking grounds of Aristotle as principles of truth, equall to the word of God,” he never cedes the resources of Aristotelian dialectic, rhetoric, or poetics to Catholicism.94 His is not a rejection “of Schoole-divinitie, but of this Schoole-divinitie.”95 And while Catholics place too much emphasis on philosophy and scholarly method, canonizing Aristotle alongside “Thomas and the Schoolemen,” his English countrymen suffer from too little attention to rigor and detail. Rainolds thus champions “Schoole-divinitie” against the varieties of “heresie in England [that] hath abandoned the studie of it.”96 Elizabethan Aristotelianism was flexible, syncretic, and adaptable across ­disciplines and agendas.97 At Oxford, different faculties and colleges endorsed markedly different versions (even genres) of Aristotelianism, which is why Rainolds’ lectures on the Rhetoric diverge so sharply from his contemporary Case’s commentaries on the Politics or the Nicomachean Ethics.98 He certainly endorsed Case’s rigorous approach to dialectic, but placed special emphasis on language and rhetoric, consonant with his commitments to Reformation and his familiarity with humanist rhetoric and dialectic, from Erasmus and Melanchthon to Petrus Ramus and Audomarus Talaeus.99 Rhetoric and dialectic were critical to the further Reformation of England. As Rainolds and his Oxford comrades advocated for a 92  Rainolds [1584], 111. 94  Rainolds [1584], 111–12. 93  Rainolds [1584], 111. 95  Rainolds [1584], 111–12 [my emphasis]. 96  Rainolds [1584], 111–12 [my emphasis]. 97 This idea informs the sharpest modern studies of Renaissance Aristotelianism, for instance: Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance [1983]; Martin [2014]; Kusukawa [1995]. 98  Case, who first taught as a college fellow at St. John’s before tutoring adolescents and university students from his home in Oxford, emphasized dialectic, foundational to the arts curriculum. In his teaching and his published work, Case established pervasive dialectical principles at work across languages and disciplines; his Scholastic approach to logic, underwritten by the university statutes, “represents a turning away from the language arts of the humanities back to the solid scientia of the Stagirite.” Case’s published works proceed by way of questions, not unlike the Oxford disputations required for students in the arts. He is not particularly interested in Aristotle’s Greek, in rhetoric or language in general, or in textual controversies so crucial to the development of Renaissance eloquence and poetics. But Case’s Aristoteles Latinus is no less sophisticated for this, drawing as he does upon a long tradition of logic, moral philosophy, and natural philosophy honed by Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and John Buridan as well as his near-contemporaries Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Theodor Zwinger. Case extends the principles of dialectic to the study of the virtues, and his commitments to Aristotelian dialectic inform his later investigations of politics, medicine, and alchemy as well. See Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England [1983], 81–5, 42–3, 177–8; Fletcher [1986], 188–98; Case [1585], Cc3v. 99  As Schmitt makes clear, “A new Reformation college such as Corpus Christi incorporated into its purpose from the beginning many of the central directives of the humanist movement, including a strong emphasis on the classical languages and literatures, the cultivation of rhetoric—as opposed to Scholastic logic—and some training in philosophical method.” Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England [1983], 19.

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skilled and godly ministry—a position common among moderate Puritans across the 1580s—they emphasized effective preaching by ministers with skill in inventing arguments, figures, and syllogisms.100 Aristotle afforded students important lessons in rhetoric, dialectic, and poetics, elements of an arts curriculum that were increasingly important to preaching and theological disputation. Preaching is paramount for Rainolds—indeed, ministers have “a commandement to teach . . . [which] ought to be as fire in our bowels, to enflame us to teach, and in others, with reverence to heare and attend to it, and unlesse we knowe this, wee have not learned the very principles of Religion.”101 Following Hyperius (himself an acute reader of Aristotle), Rainolds binds rhetoric together with piety, balancing charity and rigor insofar as “Nothing could ever seem more artful or divinely inspired than the way [the prophets and apostles] instill in souls a godly fire of desire for embracing virtue, for fleeing vices, for abhorring dealings with the immoral, for cultivating the society of the pious.”102 The study of rhetoric, then, does not precede the study of divinity; they are, rather, complementary. Indeed, students of rhetoric must rely on their existing knowledge of virtue, mores, and Scripture in order to understand the importance of auctoritas oratoris in speech.103 In this sense, rhetoric is not an introductory subject at all, and should not be taught “during boyhood, in ignorance of all arts, morals, laws, passions of the mind, and of ordinary civil and human life.”104 Rainolds’ course on Aristotle’s Rhetoric is not merely propaedeutic but rather a detailed historical and philological investigation of the text, a thorough study of its claims as well as its technical and ethical limits. It makes great sense, then, that Rainolds would discount arguments on behalf of propaedeutic drama, used to teach rhetoric or other arts in schools, as students are ill-equipped to understand rhetoric without a firm grasp of divinity and ethics. Rainolds comes to poetry, poetics, and the Poetics by way of the Rhetoric, and he explores the dialectical resources of tragedy only after defining rhetoric apropos of dialectic and affirming the importance of emotion in probable arguments. At the outset of his lectures on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Rainolds rejects the idea that rhetoric and dialectic are merely analogous arts, insisting instead on an even closer “resemblance and extraordinary affinity” [similitudinem . . . & affinitatem ingentem].105 They are not only complementary; they share resources and a common project. Both are, in Aristotle’s own words, “within the cognizance [γνωρίζειν] of all men and not confined to any special science” [1354a.1].106 Aristotle couples dialectic 100  Lake [1982], 126–33. 101 Rainolds, The Prophecie of Obadiah [1613], 9. 102  ROxford, 150–1. See also Hyperius [1577], 34v–35r. On Hyperius’ Aristotle see Stone [2000], 62–4. 103  ROxford, 170–5. 104  Rainolds follows Juan Luis Vives here, closely. ROxford, 98–9. 105  ROxford, 106–7. Rainolds used the Greek text edited by Pietro Vettori and Guillaume Morel: see Aristotle [1562]. His annotated copy survives in the Bodleian Library (Auct.S.2.29). Rainolds likely consulted other Latin editions and translations as well, probably the commentary by the Protestant scholar Martin Borrhaus, also known as Martinus Cellarius, who taught rhetoric and the Old Testament at the University of Basel after 1541. Borrhaus’ 1551 commentary on the Rhetoric reproduced Ermolao Barbaro’s 1549 Latin translation of Aristotle’s text. And Rainolds also certainly knew Vettori’s 1548 commentary, with interlinear translation: see Vettori [1548]. 106  AR, 2–3.



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and rhetoric because they both deal in syllogisms and probability. Rainolds takes this as a mandate to explore the syllogistic province of the Rhetoric and to claim Aristotelian rhetoric as a science of evidence, proof, and faith, so much so that Rainolds suggests a comparison between Aristotle’s enthymemes—“the body of proof [πίστεως]” [1354a]—and the faith [fides/πίστις] of the Gospels, the “‘absolute conviction’ . . . which the Holy Spirit produces in us concerning the salvation promised in Christ, whom anyone joins to himself by believing.”107 Even if Christian faith is ultimately distinct from worldly knowledge (the former a matter of certainty; the latter, probability), the logical province of rhetoric is obvious to Rainolds, demonstrated in myriad works, from the Aristotelian Organon to Cicero’s treatment of enthymemes in his Topica to Piero Vettori’s vision of the ἐνθυμηματικός, the “master of rhetorical arguments,” “sharp and penetrating in his reasoning.”108 Rainolds is also preoccupied with the emotional province of rhetoric, the skilled orator’s capacity to move and delight audiences. According to Rainolds, the emotions are dignified and as appropriate to rhetoric as the traffic in enthymemes, and Aristotle errs in degrading the emotions and understating their importance to oratory.109 A thorough survey of antique theses on the emotions follows in the Oxford Lectures, wherein Rainolds roundly rejects the notion that emotions [affectus], “called πάθη by the Greeks,” are necessarily irrational and deleterious, “as if they were disorders and diseases [morbi, & aegritudines] of the soul.” On the contrary, he defines emotion as “a natural commotion of the soul, imparted by God for following good and fleeing evil.”110 Emotions are proper to argument because they prove, teach, and move.111 As forms of argument, then, emotions are rational and appropriate to the art of rhetoric itself. Emotions emerge from rhetoric and are purposefully employed and set to motion by orators (and by “artists” in the broad sense, those who employ a skill or art [τέχνη]).112 Moreover, Rainolds insists that 107  ROxford, 118–19: “persuasio certa, quam in nobis efficit Spiritus Sanctus de salute in Christo promissa, quam sibi quisque credendo applicat.” I alter the translation. See also AR, 2–3. 108  ROxford, 120–1: “acer in ratiocinando & robustus.” 109  To modern readers of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Rainolds’ frustration doubtlessly seems misplaced. After all, Aristotle devotes much of Book II to the emotions, and exhorts would-be orators to understand the role of the emotions in relation to judgment, character, and virtue, all crucial to the art of rhetoric. But Rainolds assumes that Aristotle denigrates the emotions and, in the process, oratory itself. He first takes issue with the order of topics in the Rhetoric, with the presentation. Even before he defines the enthymeme as a kind of syllogism, “the strongest of rhetorical proofs” [1354b], Aristotle claims that “the arousing of prejudice, compassion, anger, and similar emotions has no connection with the matter at hand” [1354a]. In Rainolds’ treatment, the emotions help the orator understand the audience, but are apparently not integral to the art itself. He takes this as an assault, as if “Aristotle assails professors of rhetoric,” and seems to think that Aristotle, “eager for controversy,” denounces the rhetorical appeal to the emotions altogether, and paradoxically excludes the emotions from the art of rhetoric entirely. ROxford, 124–5; Leighton [1996], 206–37; AR, 2–7; and Cooper [1996], 238–57. 110  ROxford, 134–5, 142–3: “Est igitur affectus, naturalis a Deo indita, ad bonum persequendum fugiendum malum, animi commotio.” 111  ROxford, 144–5. 112  One might argue that this is precisely Aristotle’s point in Book II of the Rhetoric, when he defines the emotions [πάθη] as “all those affections which cause men to change their opinion in regard to their judgments” [1378a] before furnishing the orator with an exhaustive anatomy of emotional life. In an effort to enable the orator to understand character and virtue and, subsequently,

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God (as the efficient cause) “implanted” [inseuit] emotions in us “for the purpose of seeking good and fleeing evil” (the final cause), and that the emotions are more integral to rhetoric than the Stagirite realized.113 Emotions are resources for understanding and, as such, “must be mastered because they do good [prosunt].”114 This is the orator’s task, an end to which one employs the art of rhetoric. Rainolds imagines the movement of the emotions as a matter of theology and morality as well as a key principle of effective speaking and writing, setting an agenda for a generation of students trained at Corpus and Queen’s. In an effort to mobilize the full range of dialectical and affective resources, Rainolds collates rhetoric, dialectic, and poetics. He turns directly to the Poetics to explain emotions in the Rhetoric. Tragic poets traffic in enthymemes and affectus, amplifying the importance of the emotions to speech and logic. Rainolds emphasizes the strong connections between poetry and rhetoric as well as their fundamental relevance to the Organon. “Aristotle wrote many volumes concerning the art of speaking,” he claims, and these same volumes duly addressed elements of dialectic—for instance, syllogisms and probability.115 The Poetics ranks among them. Rainolds relies on critical commentaries on the Poetics; among the most prominent period translators and annotators, Pietro Vettori and Francesco Robortello are particularly important to him, even if they follow the “all-too-pervasive Italian manner” and take “extreme care not to mix in anywhere in [their] own writings anything that smacks of Christ.”116 Rainolds was also familiar with ancient and modern tragedies in Greek and Latin.117 Drawing upon these works in his lectures on the Rhetoric, Rainolds claims unambiguously that “Non ineptis tragoedijs, sed to effectively move his audience, Aristotle describes a series of discrete emotions—anger, pity, fear, love, envy, and shame, among others—each accompanied by varying degrees of pleasure and pain. But Rainolds does not acknowledge this in the Oxford Lectures (which cover only Book I of the Rhetoric). Rather, he accuses Aristotle of slighting the emotions. AR, 172–3; and ROxford, 144–7. I alter the translation. 113  ROxford, 142–3. 114  ROxford, 146–7. Prosunt might also be translated “they are useful” or “they are beneficial” here. 115  ROxford, 96–7. I alter the translation. 116  ROxford, 344–5. For the best available summary treatment of both Robortello’s and Vettori’s work on the Poetics see Weinberg [1961], 388–406, 461–6. 117  The list of books that Rainolds bequeathed to friends and students upon his death in 1607 supports this claim. The list included important tragedies ancient and modern (Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Seneca as well as William Gager’s Meleager and Gregorio Correr’s Progne) as well as at least two editions of the Opera Aristotelis: one in quarto and a folio volume in Greek and Latin. Moreover, Rainolds owned important commentaries on Aristotelian rhetoric and poetics by Robortello and Vettori, Theodor Zwinger’s annotated edition of the Nicomachean Ethics, and Julius Pacius’ commentary on the Organon in Greek and Latin. In some cases, Rainolds seems to have grouped appropriate books together in his will, which tells us something about how Rainolds read. For instance, to Thomas Sutton (the Queen’s College student and future lecturer at St. Saviour’s, Southwark) Rainolds bequeathed an edition of Boethius, both Vettori’s and Borrhaus’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Robortello’s commentary on the Poetics, and a copy of Horace’s Ars Poetica—a small collection which, when taken together, underscores Rainolds’ sharp understanding of the connections between the Aristotelian poetics, rhetoric, and tragedy. To one Anthony Clopton, moreover, Rainolds left a quarto edition of Sophocles, an octavo copy of Seneca’s tragoediae, and Pacius’ Organon, among other works—a gift that emphasizes the proximity between tragedy and dialectic. See Bodleian MS. Wood D. 10, fol. 31, 43, 45, 46, 47, 52, 74, 88, 90, 91; and Greaves [2004]. While there are two Anthony Cloptons—one who matriculated to Trinity College in January 1580 and another who matriculated



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grauibus argumentis; & artificiosa oratione, non histrionica iactatione affectus concitari debent”—in English: “Emotions should not be aroused by unsuitable tragedies, but by serious arguments; by skillful oratory, not by histrionic gesticulation.”118 Rainolds paraphrases Aristotle’s definition of tragedy in the Poetics, where “thought” [διάνοια]—that is, “the capacity to say what is pertinent and apt, which in formal speeches is the task of politics and rhetoric” [1450b.3–6]—is crucial to poetry, and to tragedy in particular. Rainolds’ “grauibus argumentis” is a translation of either Aristotle’s Greek μῦθος or διάνοια, both much more integral and important to tragedy than spectacle or gesture. In period Latin commentaries, διάνοια is often translated as sententia, and sententia is apprehensible in arguments (i.e. in argumentis or in argumentationibus).119 Robortello, for instance, defines thought [sententia] as “a certain power of the mind, that connects, divides, reasons, contemplates, apprehends simple things, affirms, denies, adduces, and proves”; thought is apprehensible in arguments, and those arts that are concerned with definition “approach these arguments dialectically.”120 Robortello thus locates thought in arguments that are integral to both rhetoric (in words [verba] and things [res]) and dialectic (in “things themselves” [in ipsis rebus]). For Rainolds, following Robortello, “serious arguments” are pivotal to effective tragedy and oratory alike.121 Thus he subtly harmonizes the Poetics with the Rhetoric, with an eye to explaining both texts. His understated reference to the Poetics (increasingly important to English readers in the 1570s) illustrates that the art of the orator depends upon emotion and thought alike.122 Moreover, Rainolds emphasizes the rhetorical and dialectical province of the Poetics at the expense of players and spectacle. Even here, some twenty years before his exchanges with Gager and Gentili, Rainolds relegates stage-playing and to Corpus in 1606—it is most likely that Rainolds left his books to the latter. See Bodleian MS. Wood D. 10, fol. 47; and Clark [1887], 90, 291. 118  ROxford, 146–7. I alter the translation to underline Rainolds’ key reference to the Poetics. 119 Camerarius translates μῦθος as “Argumentum” in his 1534 Commentarii Interpretationum Argumenti Thebaidos Fabularum Sophoclis . . . . Here he renders the six constituent parts of tragedy given in the Poetics thus: “Argumentum, Personas, Elocutionem, Sententiam, Actionem, Modos,” corresponding, respectively, to the terms in Poetics 1450a.9–10: “μῦθος,” “ἤθη,” “λέξις,” “διάνοια,” “ὄψις,” and “μελοποιία.” See Camerarius [1534], 6r–6v. Many thanks to Micha Lazarus for bringing this to my attention. 120  Robortello [1968], 65: “vis est quaedam mentis, quae componit, dividit, ratiocinatur, contemplatur, simplicia apprehendit, affirmat, negat, argumentatur, demonstrat. Atque hinc enascuntur facultates illae, sive artes . . . quoniam in oratione alia sunt, quae significant, alia quae significantur, idest res, et verba, omnes hae explicant τὰ ἐνόντα, sicuti patet, nam Demonstratoria, & dialectice arripiunt suas argumentationes ab iis, quae insunt in ipsis rebus.” 121  Rainolds also follows Vettori here, affirming the close connection between affectus in rhetoric and in tragedy; the forces that Aristotle describes as πάθη in his rhetorical treatment of pity are, according to Vettori, in fact “certain dreadful and cruel events of the kind plotted together to be conveyed [tractari consuerunt] in tragedies.” Vettori [1579], 365: “non motus animi, de quibus nunc accurate copioseq[ue] agit, sed casus quosdam saeuos & atroces: cuiusmodi in tragoedijs tractari consuerunt: ipse enim quoq[ue] in primo libro de arte poetarum hoc valere πάθος affirmauit, dicens esse factum, quod perdendi vim habeat, aut dolorem corpori magnum iniurat: vt sunt (inquit) neces in aperto, acerrimi corporis cruciatus, vulnera, huiuscemodique alia.” 122  Rainolds actually understands Aristotle’s ethos and pathos as species of emotion [affectus]—the former, mild and agreeable affectus, as opposed to the latter, which are wild and violent affectus. ROxford, 170–3, 210–13.

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spectacle to the background and censures those “unsuitable tragedies” which traffic in histrionic or theatrical arts rather than the proper resources of poetry. Rainolds does not deliver a poetics, but his lectures on Aristotle’s Rhetoric do illustrate the extent to which poetry, especially tragedy, shares resources with both rhetoric and dialectic. Or, better said: here Rainolds stipulates that poetry should work like rhetoric and dialectic, foregrounding arguments, investigating probabilities and necessities, even employing the emotions to the benefit of the audience. These discrete faculties share a complex history, which sixteenth-century commentaries on the Poetics explored in detail. Once again, both Vettori’s Commentarii in Primum Librum Aristotelis De Arte Poetarum (1560) and Robortello’s In Librum Aristotelis de Arte Poetica Explicationes (1548) were particularly important to Rainolds.123 Vettori suggests that tragedy was the medium through which ancient people imbibed lessons on speech, emotion, and logic—a task that is “certainly in our time [accomplished] by rhetoric” [nostri vero temporis, rhetorice].124 Vettori affirms a synchronic developmental account where the task of the ancient tragic poets, who once “fashioned [citizens] and presented diction and composition in their plots,” now belongs to oratory. In antiquity, the reader or auditor of Aristotelian tragedy “came to understand simply and in ordinary language” [intelligit vero simpliciter & populariter], but tragedy does not “deliver the rhetorical precepts of the art itself ” [praecepta ipsius in dicendo seruant].125 The latent project of antique tragedy is perfected and presented explicitly by Aristotle and other capable teachers of rhetoric. Rainolds, who draws so often on Vettori, seems to endorse this notion that rhetorical instruction at Corpus perfects the popular pedagogy of tragedy outlined in the Poetics. Moreover, he follows Vettori and Robortello alike in harmonizing the Rhetoric and the Poetics, where “it is palpably understood that one might restore reason or method to that thing,” tragedy— namely, to retrieve and emphasize the sententia of antique tragedy, which bears the traces of tragedy’s rhetorical and dialectical origins.126 Rainolds, a native English doctor who spent most of his life within the institution, was undoubtedly inclined to dislike Gentili, an Italian émigré who was rapidly promoted from outside. Mordechai Feingold describes the “xenophobia of Oxford Calvinists” against Italians, whom they saw as “prone to heresy, or at least as being inconstant in matters of religion and morals,” and Rainolds certainly expressed such sentiments against Gentili.127 Nevertheless, they hold much in common: an intellectual world, Oxford; a sense of embattled piety—Rainolds the Puritan, 123  Rainolds cites Vettori repeatedly throughout the lectures, and Vettori’s works also figure prominently among the list of books “bequeathed in 1607 by dr. John Reynolds, president of C.C.C., to Oxford colleges and individual students,” and were undoubtedly important to Rainolds as early as the 1570s; see Bodleian MS. Wood D. 10, fol. 74, 91. This list confirms that Rainolds owned a copy of Robortello’s edition of the Poetics, bound together with [“una cum”] “Petrus Victorius in Aristotelis Rhetorica,” fol. 74. 124  Vettori [1967], 73. 125  Vettori [1967], 73. 126  Vettori [1967], 74: “intelligitur enim manifesto cuius rei rationem reddat, cum ait.” 127  Before he opposed Gentili’s advancement, Rainolds established his Puritanical credentials in leading the charge against Antonio del Corro, the controversial Spanish preacher who asked to be named Doctor of Divinity and reside at Oxford. Feingold [2004], 334; Dent [1983], 103–25, 135–51.



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Gentili the Italian Protestant forced into exile by the Inquisition; powerful patrons like Walsingham; and a comportment to theater and tragedy by way of Aristotle’s Poetics. It is unsurprising, then, that Gentili would agree with much of Rainolds’ account of tragedy, and would find Rainolds’ modest attempts to harmonize the Rhetoric and the Poetics compelling. Gentili follows a similar path in his most thorough statement on poetics—the 1593 Commentatio ad Legem III Codicis de Professoribus et Medicis, a commentary on the Justinian Code, particularly the “law of the Emperor Philip which decrees that poets are to enjoy no privilege of immunity for taxation,” a law that Gentili finds peculiar considering comparable immunities are granted to grammarians, orators, and painters.128 Gentili initially delivered a version of the Commentatio during the Comitia at Oxford; the text was revised and printed at Oxford in 1593, and serves as a critical reference for both Gentili and Rainolds in the ensuing debates concerning stage-plays and mendacia.129 Despite their differences, the two men share ideas and resources. Gentili, who draws much from Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Poetices Libri Septem (1561), argues that poetry is “an instrument of active civil philosophy,” shaping the morals [mores] of citizens by means of “invented deeds and fictitious actions” [factis fictis et fictis actionibus].130 Like Scaliger, Castelvetro, Rainolds, and virtually every reader, translator, and interpreter of the Poetics in the sixteenth century, Gentili is ready and willing to criticize Aristotle or to point to the limits of his philosophy. Yet, even while he is reluctant to identify himself entirely as one of the “followers of Aristotle” [sectatores Aristotelis], Gentili is indebted to Aristotle and his humanist interlocutors.131 He affirms, like Rainolds, that “poetry is a part of logic, as is now agreed” and that, “The material of the poet is the universal verisimilar, not the particular true.”132 Gentili notes that, “Thomas Aquinas and Averroes thought that poetry was a part of logic or dialectic, and others at this time have thus expounded it,” affirming both late medieval and early modern interpretations of the Poetics.133 He also places poetry in relation to rhetoric and dialectic by way of Aristotle: The poetic art, which hands down precepts about writing a poem, is no doubt a part of logic, since it is engaged in propounding the construction of examples; just as rhetoric is a part of dialectic, since it teaches about the enthymeme. And the example and the enthymeme are instruments of logic. The art of poetry lies in this, that it should teach how examples are to be constructed by poets—how to propose a subject to be imitated or shunned.134

History and natural sciences deal in particular people and events. Poetry, however, traffics in universal elements, such as the virtues. The poet is able to render otherwise elusive universal things apprehensible; just as “the painter paints an image of such excellence as universal nature could never display,” so does the poet depict “men even 128  AG, 225–6. 129  AG, 229, 251. 130  AG, 238, 259–60. 131  AG, 231–2, 253. 132  AG, 231–2, 253. 133  Binns cites Giacomo Zabarella [De natura logicae in the Opera Logica (1578)] and Antonio Riccoboni [Poetica Aristotelis ab Antonio Riccoboni Latine conversa (1587)] as scholars who hold this opinion hoc tempore. AG, 237. 134  AG, 237, 258–9.

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of such virtue as human nature is not capable of.”135 These are elements of the Poetics that Rainolds ignores, probably because of his Reformed skepticism ­concerning the human apprehension of universals in nature as well as his own emphasis on probability. While Rainolds and Gentili both collate the Rhetoric and the Politics with the Poetics to buttress claims about poetry, they emphasize very different aspects of Aristotle’s work. Directing readers to the Rhetoric, for instance, Gentili posits that “the proper use of the arts is honorable”—eschewing Aristotle’s own rejoinder here, that “wrongly used, they may do an equal amount of harm.”136 It is this warning, however, that animates Rainolds’ opposition to stage-playing and spectacle. As he collates rhetoric, dialectic, and poetics with reference to Aristotle, Rainolds teaches students to evaluate arguments based on probable reason as well as faith, affirming the chief dialectical insight of the Poetics, that “some falsehoods are more probable than some truths” [Quaedam falsa probabiliora quibusdam veris], a critical reference to Poetics 1460a.26–32 and 1461b.13–21.137 He complicates the division of arts wherein dialectic is the science of things [res] themselves, rhetoric of words and things [verba et res]. This may be true of the presentation of arguments, but both rhetoric and dialectic are sciences of probability. Aristotle obscures this in his teaching, Rainolds claims, insofar as he accommodates his treatment of rhetoric to the capacities of the unlearned and bases his study of language on custom and use rather than truth. When poets traffic in language and things, poetry is like r­ hetoric. But once dramatic poetry incorporates spectacle and stage-playing, arts that are foreign to poetry, tragedy is yet another degree removed from things themselves, from the resources of reason in a world of probabilities. Scripture admonishes key elements of Elizabethan stage-playing; ancient authorities, Christian and otherwise, confirm the depravity of spectacles and actors; but the spectacular and histrionic aspects of tragedy are not merely sinful, they are also confusing, corruptible, and convincing. Rainolds’ long campaign against theater is not only a matter of faith but also an attempt to defend poetry, in its fundamental and original relation to truth and probability, against those who would exploit it. S P E C TA C L E A N D R E C I TAT I O N Gentili and Rainolds vehemently disagree over the meaning and value of stageplaying, particularly the degree to which stage-playing is essential to tragedy or comedy. They share assumptions about tragedy’s inferential and apodeictic faculties as well as the larger philosophical and rhetorical purchase of poetics. But they have very different interpretations of enactment and spectacle in the Poetics, an abiding discrepancy that shapes their respective arguments about spectacle and performance at large. Aristotle is admittedly difficult here, even contradictory, so

135  AG, 240–1, 262. 136  AG, 240–1, 262; AR, 12–13 [I.i.13 (1355b)]. 137  ROxford, 156–7; AP, 122–5, 134–5.



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much so that critics like Castelvetro questioned the integrity of the Poetics.138 Aristotle claims that tragedy employs “the mode of enactment [δρώντων], not narrative [ἀπαγγελίας]” [1449b.26] and that, since it involves the imitation of an action, a key component of tragedy must “necessarily be the arrangement of the spectacle [ὄψεως κόσμος]” [1449b.30–2].139 However, Aristotle also insists that spectacle, although “emotionally potent” [ψυχαγωγικόν], nevertheless “falls quite outside the art and is not integral to poetry”; “tragedy’s capacity,” we learn, “is independent of performance and actors” [τῆς τραγῳδίας δύναμις καὶ ἄνευ ἀγῶνος καὶ ὑποκριτῶν ἔστιν] [1450b.16–18].140 Aristotle privileges plot [μῦθος], the “structure of events” [τῆς συστάσεως τῶν πραγμάτων]—so much so that “the plot should be so structured that, even without seeing it performed, the person who hears the events that occur experiences horror and pity,” the appropriate tragic pleasures, “at what comes about” [1453b.3–7].141 How necessary, then, is spectacle or stage-playing, if tragic plots themselves are sufficient to move readers and auditors? What does Aristotle mean by “enactment”? Rainolds’ sources are illuminating here. Robortello, assessing Paccius’ translation of the Poetics, claims that in tragedy “agents [agentes] accomplish the mimesis, and by ‘agents’ Paccius understands ‘stage players’ [histriones], who by acting [agendo] accomplish the mimesis in theater [in scena].”142 Yet Robortello also affirms that “the complete power of tragedy is discerned even if the competition of the poets is removed, as well as the recitation of stage players [recitatio histrionum], which takes place in the theater.”143 Here Robortello references Rhetoric III.i.3 directly, where Aristotle introduces ὑπόκρισις, “the recitation of stage-players”— an element of style [λέξις] that “made its appearance late in tragedy and rhapsody, for at first the poets themselves acted [ὑπεκρίνοντο] their tragedies” [1403b], hence the “competition of the poets” [certamen poëtarum].144 Robortello notes that while the poets initially recited their own work aloud, stage-players soon applied their particular expertise to this recitation, to great acclaim, “in order that a given poem might seem praiseworthy” [ut laudabile videretur aliquod poëma].145 Here poets and stage-players alike “recite,” and Robortello uses the Latin “recito” in both cases, but the stage-players also employed a powerful histrionic art that was initially foreign to tragedy. Using the passive form of the verb video, Robortello underscores the critical difference between poetic recitation and histrionic performance: the stage-player can make poetry, irrespective of its inherent worth, “seem praiseworthy,” a great strength with the equally great potential for abuse. With reference to Rhetoric 1403b, Robortello draws important distinctions between the stage art of the histrio, silent reading, and simple recitation: “Remove the spectacle, 138  See Chapter 2, p. 83. 139  AP, 46–9. 140  AP, 52–5. 141  AP, 72–5. 142  Robortello [1968], 55. 143  Robortello [1968], 70–1: “tragoediae vis tota perspicitur, etia si tollatur certamen poëtarum, & recitatio histrionum, quae fit in scena.” 144  AR, 344–7. 145  Robortello [1968], 71: “poëtas ipsos sua poëmata recitantes inter se certasse de laude scribendi poëmatis. mox adhibitos qui histriones recitarent, qui multum sua peritia efficere poterant, ut laudabile videretur aliquod poëma.”

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remove the theater, and all of the remaining theatrical aids,” and a tragic poem will nevertheless still produce its intended effects—“For whether one reads silently or hears another read aloud without any gesture or imitation, which is employed by stage players at the theater, their soul will still tremble in fear and feel moved by great pity.”146 Here Robortello explores the differences between rhetorical delivery and stage-playing, forms of enactment that share a history but which diverge, as tragedy became increasingly spectacular and histrionic and as scholars of rhetoric formalized the latent and unarticulated principles of antique poetry. To illustrate this distinction further, Robortello proceeds immediately to Cicero’s Brutus, to the orator’s praise of Gaius Piso. Cicero claims that Piso’s “words were carefully chosen, his sentences compact and periodic; his argument was varied and convincing, his ideas shrewd and neatly put; his bodily movement and gesture had a natural grace, which gave the impression of art and training, though that was not the case.”147 These are not histrionic gestures but rather disciplined movements, showcasing Piso’s control over body and language, indelibly linked. Robortello marshals the Brutus to illustrate the enduring connection between poetic and rhetorical recitation, both of which are distinct from stage-playing and spectacle. While some orators might take recourse to outward gestures and pronunciation, the most capable orators “have a bite, or a power, that we strive for, even without gestures or bodily movements—a power that resides in words and things, not in gesture or the delivery of the speech.”148 Note, first, that Robortello draws a distinction between the “words and things” which comprise arguments in rhetoric and aspects of style and delivery of rhetoric. It is a distinction that is internal to rhetoric. Gesture and pronunciation are elements of rhetoric that draw attention to the force of words and things themselves. These are not histrionic elements, proper to spectacle, that express rhetorical arguments. Robortello rather introduces a version of rhetorical delivery that is embodied but still neither spectacular nor histrionic, a licit form of performance that meets Aristotle’s criteria in the Poetics. Robortello attests that unduly histrionic acting (which he calls “actio” here) “originates in nature, and cannot be taught by any rhetorical precepts”; this is the art of the stage-player, the ὑποκριτικός of Rhetoric III.i.7, etymologically related to the ὑποκριτής in Poetics 1450b, the stage-player that serves the spectacle in tragedy.149 This histrionic type 146  Robortello [1968], 148: “Tolle enim apparatum, tolle scenam, reliquaque omnia scenica adiumenta, nihilo tamen minus efficiet id, quod convenit tragico poëmati. Nam aliquis vel legens tacitus, vel audiens ab alio recitari sine gesticulatione ulla, aut imitatione, quali utuntur histriones in scena; inhorrescet, & sentiet animum suum magna commoveri commiseratione erga Oedipodem.” 147  Cicero [1939], 234–5. 148  Robortello [1968], 148: “Oratores enim etiam ipsi habent, unde orationem suam exornent, augeantque, extrinseco gestus, pronunciationisque adiumento, quo sublato, saepe tota friget oratio, neque ullam habet vim, sed ea est optimi oratio oratoris, ut etiam sine gestu, & motu corporis; aculeos habeat, ac vim, quam quaerimns [sic]; ut in rebus, verbisque insit; non in gestu, & pronunciatione dicentis.” 149  Robortello [1968], 64, 70: “Aristoteles lib. III. Rhetoricum [1404a] . . . nam sicuti in poëtice facultate apparatus minime eget artificio; ita in Rhetorica, pronunciatio, & actio, quae a natura proficiscitur, nec tradi ullis praeceptionibus potest.” As Micha Lazarus makes clear, however, under other circumstances (in this case, in English pedagogical plays) “actio” is essential to rhetorical instruction and to pronunciation in particular. See Lazarus [2017], 41–2.



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of actor is derided as ἄτεχνος—a stage-player without art or skill, or at least without poetic or rhetorical skill. According to Robortello, tragedy is enacted, but this does not mean it is “acted,” as is a stage play. Aristotle degrades histrionic stageplaying because there are poetic and rhetorical versions of enactment, irreducible to spectacle, that meet the criteria in the Poetics. Vettori makes a similar point, albeit from a different perspective. Like Robortello, he recognizes that the power of tragedy [tragoediae vis] is independent of both spectacle [apparatus] and stage-players, elements which were introduced to assist the art of poetry.150 But, Vettori adds, spectacle remains essential. He admits that “when the written plot is carefully read aloud, it is able to produce the same effect in us, and to move our minds in the same manner,” but Vettori nevertheless insists that “everything is more expressive and intense in the theater”—which is precisely why it is “not without cause [that] spectacle itself is included among the parts that define tragedy.”151 Words and things, both of which constitute rhetorical and poetic arguments, are “more expressive and intense in the theater.” Aristotle himself tarries with this claim in the Rhetoric, where “sufferings [πάθη] are pitiable when they appear close at hand . . . those who contribute to the effect by gestures, voice, dress, and dramatic action generally, are more pitiable” [1386a].152 Vettori tellingly renders this in Latin: “Necesse est repraesentatas personas illas figuris, & vocibus, & vestimentis, demumque actione, miserabiliores esse,” emphasizing how theatrical representations are necessarily more effective.153 Spectacle is admittedly essential to the definition of tragedy. But Vettori also identifies a rhetorical approach to enactment that is distinct from more histrionic forms of stage-playing. It is “the duty of careful tragedians” not only “to compose the plot” but also “to produce and represent that plot by means of diction [verbis], which with great care is able to be done, setting it up for themselves in full view [cuncta ante oculos],” identifying audio, visual, and kinetic elements in tragedy that are proper to diction rather than spectacle. Thus Vettori reminds readers that diction includes “the gestures and figures by which one speaks, expresses, and reacts.”154 Diction is rhetorical and comprises much more than mere speech. It is discursive, in a broad sense, including elements like gesture and pronunciation as well as figures and tropes. As Vettori gives a more expansive definition of “diction” which includes gestures and figures proper to rhetorical recitation, he also discovers a version of tragic enactment that is neither unduly spectacular nor histrionic.155 150  Vettori [1967], 78. 151  Vettori [1967], 78: “cum enim scripta fabula legitur accurate, eadem in nobis efficere potest, & eodem pacto animos nostros commovere; quamvis in scena omnia sint expressiora ac vehementiora. Unde non sine causa apparatus ipse positus est in iis partibus, quae reddunt tragoediam qualem.” 152  AR, 228–9. 153  Vettori [1548], 366. 154  Vettori [1548], 366: “officium esse diligentium tragicorum, antequam poëma conficiant, fabulam coagmentare, & verbis quoque illam conficere ac repraesentare, quanta maxime diligentia fieri potest, cuncta ante oculos sibi constituentes: in ea enim re exponenda hoc verbo usus est, ut paulo quoque post, cum inquit, non debere quoque omittere, quin omnia, quae res patitur, gestibus quoque figurisque de quibus etiam hic loquitur, exprimat ac referat.” 155 Vettori is more skeptical of tragedy’s capacity to move audiences without spectacle than is Robortello. Vettori employs key words to qualify Aristotle’s strong claims: poets insist on the primacy of plot “as if ” it were a law [quasi lex]; listeners are “almost necessarily moved” upon hearing the

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Both Robortello and Vettori confirm that tragedy is an enacted species of poetry. Robortello emphasizes rhetorical performance, distinct from stage-playing; Vettori follows suit and expands “diction” to include gestures and figures proper to rhetoric that draw attention to arguments. Both commentators hope to explain the difference between tragedy, which is an authentic expression of poetic art, and the spectacular and histrionic arts that supplement tragedy as poetry. In other words, they hope to explain how tragedy is at once enacted and distinct from spectacle and stage-playing. Robortello and Vettori come to an answer once they harmonize the Poetics with the Rhetoric: Aristotelian tragic enactment is more akin to rhetorical delivery than to the foreign art of the stage-player. Gentili, however, suggests precisely the opposite in his 1593 Commentatio. He asks, “What stops us from saying about acting [histrionia], what Aristotle says about oratorical delivery [de actione oratoria],” that “‘It’s a trivial and indecorous thing—but, indeed, when it is accommodated [adcommodetur] to the perfection of poetry, it must be judged not on grounds of respectability, but on the grounds of artistic necessity.’”156 Robortello and Vettori explore the distinctions between histrionic stage-playing and rhetorical delivery; Gentili, on the other hand, collapses these distinctions, implying that successful rhetorical delivery, like stage-playing, is necessarily histrionic and spectacular, already accommodated to the capacities of the vulgar. Although Gentili adapts Rhetoric III.i.5–6 [1404a] here, and initially aims to draw an analogy between rhetorical delivery and stage-playing, he ultimately lumps myriad forms of oratory and acting together. Actores, histriones, factores, ludii, even those men who in scenam prodeunt—all of these players are distinct from “poets [poetae] as authors [auctores]” but not necessarily among themselves.157 In his final letter to Rainolds, moreover, Gentili refers directly to the Poetics as he outlines Aristotle’s “six parts of tragedy,” among which “he counted action” [recensuit actionis].158 In an idiosyncratic reading that departs from the vast Oedipus fabula. But Oedipus is exceptional, and in most cases spectacle is required to accomplish the desired effect, from the trappings of the stage and stage-players to the work of architects and painters. Vettori ultimately confirms that spectacle is integral to tragedy, particularly the stage and stage-players. Vettori [1967], 131, 132: “Cum iam, quod melius putat esse accuratus doctor, confirmasset, alterius rationis, quam improbat, vitia, incommodaque exponit, hoc pacto. Conficere autem hoc auxilio spectationis atque apparatus, magis expers est artificij, & magno sumptu eget. Quod vero minorem artem hoc in se habere tradit, intelligit artem eam, quae propria est poetae: nam sine arte aliqua illa effici non posse constat: requirit enim scenae & histrionum ornatus, operam architecti, & pictoris, qui possit oculis imponere, & aliarum etiam non nullarum atrium industriam: quibus omnibus in rebus cum magni sumptus fiant, dixit modum hunc requirere pucuniae effusionem.” 156 In 1593 and in his later correspondence with Rainolds, Gentili is admittedly reluctant to affirm, unambiguously, that stage-playing is a necessary component of tragedy. He instead offers conditional statements, as when he reframes his earlier analogy linking rhetoric and poetics by way of a syllogism. “If that which is trivial and indecorous in rhetoric, such as action [actio], is judged on grounds of necessity, so too is that which is to be judged trivial and indecorous in poetry. This is indeed stage-playing [histrionia]. Thus that which is to be judged on such grounds in poetics is stage-playing.” He does not simply say that “stage-playing is deemed necessary.” Moreover, here Gentili conflates rhetorical delivery— which in this case he calls “actio,” paraphrasing Rhetoric III.i.5–6—and histrionia. AG, 247, 269; ROverthrow, 166, 171. As Gentili is restating an earlier argument, I follow Binns’ translation of the 1593 Commentatio in my translation here. 157  AG, 243, 264–5; AR, 348–51. See also Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 108. 158  MS. Corpus Christi College Oxon. 352. fol. 277.



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majority of early modern commentators and translators, Gentili associates stage-playing with Aristotelian “action” [πρᾶξις], not “spectacle” [ὄψις], and he seems to use the terms “actio” and “histrionia actio” interchangeably.159 Gentili explicitly names stage-playing as a method of accommodation, by which otherwise foreign or difficult arguments are communicated to various spectators. It is perhaps unsurprising that Gentili places histrionic and spectacular elements of performance in the service of accommodation, an interpretation of the Poetics that he shares with Ludovico Castelvetro. Gentili counted Giacomo Castelvetro, an accomplished translator and editor as well as an advocate for Italian letters in Elizabethan London, among his patrons, if not among his personal friends.160 Gentili and Giacomo Castelvetro had much in common. Both men were Protestant refugees, suspected of heresy and thus forced into exile from their native Italy under threat from the Roman Inquisition. Whereas Giacomo Castelvetro fled Modena in 1564, Gentili left the Marches (another alleged “asylum lutheranorum”) in 1579, accused of holding “accursed new doctrines.”161 Gentili arrived in London in August 1580 and immediately cultivated relationships within the extensive Italian community there, through which he met Castelvetro.162 Giacomo was the nephew of Ludovico Castelvetro, with whom he lived in exile from 1564 to 1570, in Geneva, Lyons, and Basel.163 During this period Giacomo regularly attended classes on Greek and Latin literature taught by his uncle, delivered as the latter prepared his Poetica for publication. Giacomo almost certainly summarized these lessons for Gentili.164 159  Gentili makes this clear in his De actoribus & spectatoribus fabularum non notandis as well. See MS. Corpus Christi College Oxon. 352. fol. 277; and Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 49–50. 160  Maclean [2009], 291. 161  Born in San Ginesio in 1552, Gentili studied Law at the University of Perugia (an institution “commended for its admirably systematic lecture-courses and the rigour of its examinations”) before beginning his career as a municipal lawyer in Ascoli in 1572. But his Italian career was brief. Gentili’s father Matteo was a member of SS. Tommaso e Barnabà, a brotherhood devoted to lay piety that undoubtedly seemed suspicious to Counter-Reformation authorities; suspected of heresy, both father and son fled, together with Gentili’s brother Scipio. Despite being “an exile because of his faith” [Rainolds addresses Gentili as “te, quem fidei causa exulare ferunt”] Gentili largely eschewed religious disputation, save for a diatribe against the papacy, De papatu Romano Antichristo assertiones ex verbo Dei et SS. Patribus, which circulated in manuscript in and around Oxford, and several debates concerning Scripture, style, and translation—for instance, his De Latinitate veteris Bibliorum versionis male accusata (1606). While he was undoubtedly a Protestant, well-versed in Reformed theology and loyal to the Church of England, he is more irenicist than most of his contemporaries. According to Ian Maclean, Gentili was seen “as an intellectually adventurous staunch protestant with irenic feelings towards other protestant sects.” This is true insofar as he praises Machiavelli as “a eulogist of democracy” and “a man who deserves our commiseration in the highest degree” in his treatise on ambassadors, De Legationibus Libri Tres (1585), and he supported Giordano Bruno’s successful attempt to find employment at the University of Wittenberg in 1586, where Bruno lectured on Aristotle. He is also more willing to bracket theology entirely, and to treat discrete disciplines independently from religious or confessional concerns. See Lavenia [2012], 121, 126–33; Barton, “The Faculty of Law” [1986], 279; ROverthrow, 166; Maclean [2009], 335, 321; van der Molen [1968], 38–40, 246–52, 51; Gentili [1585], 101; [1924], 156; Panizza [2002], 68–114. 162  He also met later benefactors like Tobie Matthew, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, and Sir Philip Sidney, and soon benefited from the influence of such powerful patrons; Gentili incorporated at Oxford and was named Professor of Roman Law at St. John’s College in March 1581. Barton, “The King’s Readers” [1986], 289–90; Gause [2004]. 163  Butler [1950], 7–14; De Rinaldis [2003], 166–7. 164  Butler [1950], 4–5.

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Even without explicit references to Ludovico Castelvetro’s Poetica, however, Gentili justifies stage-playing as an accommodation, basing his judgment on the ends of performance rather than on particular modes or histories of theatrical expression. While he is critical of professional actors who work “for hire,” Gentili asserts that “actors who do not act in public for money, and who are not performers of unworthy plays, seem not to deserve stigmatization.”165 Gentili defends stageplaying insofar as it functions like the Rattle of Archytas, the meaning of which Aristotle develops in Politics VIII.vi.166 The rattle was literally “a good invention, which people give to children in order that while occupied with this they may not break any of the furniture . . . Whereas then a rattle is a suitable occupation for infant children, education serves as a rattle for young people when older” [1340b.26–32].167 Gentili’s point is remarkably simple: inoffensive plays, when staged for recreational or pedagogical purposes, are licit. Thus “courtiers, or scholars who sometimes perform plays [agunt . . . fabulas] in our university, incur no stigma,” particularly as “they are wont to bar almost all men from watching, either by the strangeness of the tongue, or otherwise.”168 And when it comes to the matter of performance, Gentili seems to assume that all forms of tragic enactment are histrionic. He is much more interested in the accommodated ends of poetry than in alternatives to histrionic stage-playing, such as rhetorical forms of enactment. For Rainolds, however, Aristotle serves as an august witness to the abuses of enactment in Greek antiquity. While Rainolds is undoubtedly more familiar with Robortello’s and Vettori’s annotated translations, he paraphrases Alessandro Piccolomini’s 1575 commentary on the Poetics to greatest effect, noting that “Piccolomini—a good philosopher today, as he is praised by you, Gentili—reckons the histrionic arts not among things necessary or useful or among the arts of healing, but among things excessive, an art called less worthy.”169 For Rainolds, Aristotle deemed the wide range of artes ludicrae to be unnecessary, undignified, and excessive, particularly histrionic stage-playing. He cites the Greek Poetics in Th’overthrow of stage-playes, illustrating that Aristotle recognized the depravity of spectacular religious festivals that incorporated “filthie matters represented . . . in the shewes & playes belonging thereunto,” even if cities permitted this “beastliness.”170 In other words, “Aristotle him selfe, one of the best among them,” advocated the abolition of “all unseemely speeches and spectacles out of his common wealth.”171 Rainolds, demonstrating what J.W. Binns accurately identified as “an intimate knowledge of Greek philology and of Greek authors,” collates the Poetics

165  AG, 248, 270–1. 166  AG, 245, 266–7. 167  Aristotle [1932], 660–1. 168  AG, 245, 266–7. 169  MS. Corpus Christi College Oxon. 352. fol. 249: “Piccolomineum, bonum hodie philosphum, ut a te laudatur, artes ludicras numerare, non in neccessariis sive utilibus, in quibus artem medendi, sed in redundantibus & artium nomine minus dignis.” See also Piccolomini [1575], 107, 123. 170  Rainolds harmonizes Poetics 4 [1449a.11–12] and Politics VII.15 [1336b.16–18] here, and translates the Greek τωθασμός as “beastliness,” referring to the phallic songs in particular described in the Poetics. ROverthrow, 70–1. 171  As for those spectacles “done in the honour of their Gods, according to their lawe,” Aristotle accepts these performances only insofar as the law permits them. ROverthrow, 71 [my emphasis].



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with the Politics.172 The Greek text of Politics VII.xv [1336b.20–1, 34–6] appears in the margins, and where Aristotle warns that younger audiences should not be allowed to see or hear ἰάμβων, Rainolds cross-references the Poetics and translates this word as “tragedie.”173 The effect is patent, as Rainolds’ Aristotle warns of the dangers of theater, proposing “a lawe to be made in all well ordered cities, that young men should neither see tragedie played, nor Comedie, untill in riper yeares they be past danger of being hurt thereby”; Aristotle “groundeth his advise on reason and experience; because things which young men receave, doe sticke fast by them: and therefore sith principall care ought to bee taken that they may proove vertuous, they should be kept from hearing any ill speeches, and seeing any ill deedes.”174 For Rainolds’ Aristotle, tragedy is by definition mimetic and enacted, but histrionic performances and spectacular effects actually obscure and obstruct the most important, definitive, and effective elements of tragedy. Thus Rainolds makes a clear distinction between histrionic “stage-playing” and a body of “learned poëtrie” that lends itself to recitation and rhetorical delivery.175 Rainolds does not prohibit recitation—he readily admits having “recited sundry of [Seneca’s] verses upon occasion in my Lectures”—but insists that “it is one thing to recite [Recitare],” yet “an other thing to play [Agere],” a distinction that he draws from Robortello’s and Vettori’s commentaries on the Poetics, among other sources.176 Rainolds’ own interpretation of Aristotle’s Poetics informs his unyielding opposition to those comedies and tragedies that rely on stagecraft, those “unseemely speeches and spectacles” which are unduly histrionic, even as he remains unabashedly interested in tragedy ancient and modern.177 He does not condemn “the writing of Comedies, or tragedies” [emphasis original]. Rainolds is explicitly opposed only to “the playing of them.”178 In this sense Rainolds, faithful to Aristotle’s Poetics, is much more interested in promoting rhetorical forms of enactment than in Gentili’s teleological justification of stage-playing. Put simply, Rainolds bases his judgments more on the means of enactment than its ends. His precise objections to spectacle and histrionic acting 172  Binns [1990], 446. 173  He takes recourse to Poetics 4 [1448b.27–1449a.30], where Aristotle briefly outlines the history of the iambic meter, from its earliest appearance to the moment when “tragedy acquired dignity, and its meter became the iambic trimeter,” most appropriate to “spoken dialogue.” AP, 630–3. 174  ROverthrow, 114–15. 175  ROverthrow, 59. 176  Rainolds revisits this argument in a later letter, specifying that, “I answered that it is one thing to recite [Recitare], another thing to play [Agere], as I declared by sundrie writers; and added that I would have bene content to heare your tragedie recited; had it bene recited or pronounced onely.” ROverthrow, 22, 139. 177  When Rainolds identifies Aristotle’s “ἰάμβων” with “such speeches (used to bee expressed in that kind of verse) as there are a number uttered . . . in [Gager’s] Ulysses redux, and commonly in all tragedies,” he at once refers to Aristotle’s history of tragedy in the Poetics [1449a.6–30] and evinces a keen knowledge of ancient and modern drama, locating Gager’s work in the history of tragedy and poetics. ROverthrow, 114–15; AP, 40–5. 178  Rainolds makes this point dramatically in his second response to Gager, as he interrupts himself to specify the true source of his discontent: “Is the writing of Comedies, or tragedies, but what speake I of writing? in mentioning whereof your art appeereth farther, sith I condemned it not: is the playing of them made by mee a thing of so vile and base qualitie, as persequuting, or blaspheming?” [emphasis original]. ROverthrow, 156.

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are evident on the first page of Th’overthrow of stage-playes (that is, in his first letter to Gager, dated July 10, 1592), as he reminds Gager that “I did reprove our Theater-sights & Stage-playes, as hurtfull and pernicious, many years agoe” in the preface to his 1579 Theses, over a decade before he refused to attend Gager’s Ulysses Redux.179 There he specifically censures “Pestes scenicorum” and “theatralia spectacula”—translated (in 1584) as “the plagues of stageplayers, the sights and shewes of Theaters” and here (in 1592) as “Theater-sights & Stage-playes”—histrionic and spectacular elements of performance, but not tragic enactment tout court.180 Rainolds makes a similar claim in his response to Gager, apropos of the Latin verb “recitare”: “it is one thing to recite; an other thing to play . . . And if your tragedie had bene recited onely, as by the title [Vlysses redux, tragedia nova, in aede Christi Oxoniae publice recitata] a stranger might conceue, who knew not that it had bene played: surely for mine owne parte I would have accounted it no more losse of time to have heard you pronounce it then my selfe to reade it.”181 This crucial distinction between recitation and histrionic performance enables Rainolds to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate tragedies. As a proponent of rhetorical delivery, Rainolds accepts enactment as an essential component of tragedy. But Rainolds promotes reciting “as Horace used to recite his owne writings; as poems were recited to Quintilius Varus; as Persius did recite his booke unto Cornutus, before he published it.”182 He refuses to admit the necessity of spectacle or stageplaying. Drawing surreptitiously from Robortello’s treatment of the Poetics, Rainolds endorses tragedies that serve the same purposes as rhetoric and dialectic, tragedies that may be read silently or recited, that teach and demonstrate through arguments, and that bear upon the emotions in controlled, rational circumstances. Hence Rainolds’ assertion that proper tragedy eschews spectacle and stage-playing altogether. He does not condemn tragedy at large but only ineptae tragoediae, unsuitable tragedies, and endorses “serious arguments” [gravibus argumentis] and “skillful oratory” [artificiosa oratione] over “histrionic gesticulation” [histrionica iactatione]. In his own lectures on the Rhetoric, Rainolds frequently quotes Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca. He draws from Seneca’s Medea in particular to make a case about method: “What Medea, in Seneca’s play, once sang [cecinit] to Creon in a bad cause, now I in a good cause can make use of [usurpare] with perfect justice among you students: ‘He who has judged anything with the other side unheard, even if he judged fairly, he was not fair.’ ”183 Rainolds uses the word cecinit here— from cano, which is variously given in period dictionaries as “To sing, to play on an instrument, to prayse, to prophesie,” “To prayse or extoll greatly,” “to describe in verses,” and “to wryte of ”—to describe how the embodied Medea initially sang or

179  ROverthrow, 1. 180 In Latin: “Excitate studia, paene dixeram iacentia, sed spero meliora. Extinguite Sirenes a studijs avocantes, desidiam, dulce malum: delicias, escam veneris: conviviorum luxum, vanitatem vestium, ludos illiberales, symposia intempestiva, pestes scenicorum, Theatralia spectacula.” Rainolds [1584], 678; and [1580], 30. 181  ROverthrow, 22. 182  ROverthrow, 143. 183  ROxford, 138–9.



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acted in performances of Seneca’s tragedy.184 In other words, Rainolds points knowingly to a history of unsuitable histrionic performances of the Medea. But in moving from cano to usurpo Rainolds shifts registers, from histrionic enactment to his own rhetorical delivery. The actor playing Medea initially cecinit—that is, “sang” or “recited” or “proclaimed” in a bombastic language—but he delivers her lines deliberately, to a purpose (“a good cause”), employing declamatory devices proper to rhetorical style rather than histrionic techniques at home on the stage. Tragic enactment and recitation are distinct from spectacle and stage-playing.185 For Rainolds, rhetoric and tragic enactment alike foreground thought and emotion in the language of a discrete speaker.186 Rainolds censures Vettori, for instance, for quoting Euripides’ Medea without considering rhetorical matters relative to enactment; Vettori attributes Medea’s cruel statements to Euripides himself, disregarding the dramatic (that is, enacted) form of the tragedy. “Euripides gave Medea a speech in keeping with a bloodthirsty fury,” Rainolds claims, “he did not express his own view . . . [but rather] always attributed that furious passion to raving women, and not to strong men.”187 Vettori neglects the degree to which tragedy is enacted as well as how audiences are asked to evaluate among ideas and affectus attributed to different speakers. In its enactment, tragedy emphasizes how the meaning of language depends upon the affectus of the speaker.188 Tragedy foregrounds ethos and pathos in speech, which, in Aristotle’ Rhetoric, serve as “proofs” or “arguments” that readers and spectators are asked to evaluate, employing forms of reasoning about probability; as Aristotle insists in the Rhetoric that “a man must be capable of logical reasoning, of studying characters [ἤθη] and the virtues, and thirdly the emotions [πάθη]—the nature and character of each, its origin, and the manner in which it is produced” [1356a.7], the same is true of tragedy in the Poetics.189 In this sense, enactment is critical to the dialectical work of tragedy. Readers and auditors must exercise reason in evaluating between discrete speakers, crucial to Rainolds’ account of piety. Rainolds is of course willing to criticize Aristotle, and he consistently censures and revises the Aristotelian corpus across his lectures on the Rhetoric. Aristotle, he claims, habitually abandons truth in favor of custom. Quoting Juan-Luis Vives’ De Causis Corruptarum Artium (1531), Rainolds notes that “many writers in the matter of articulating rules of the arts did not direct their gaze upon the truth itself, but entrusted themselves to usage . . . [and thus] supposed themselves well rid of the 184  In an interpretation of Cicero’s Paradoxa Stoicorum III Gentili claims “Cantare est pronunciare. Veteres scilicet fabulas, & tragicas, & comicas non sermone, ut hodie fit, sed altis vocibus, cantibusque recitabant.” Cooper [1578], Q1v–Q2v; as laudare and “to synge,” admitting multa significat as well in Galfridus [1532], Evir; ROxford, 138–9 [I alter the translation here]; and Gentili, Disputationes Duae [1599], 75. 185  In his Poetices Scaliger explicitly rejects the suggestion that comedy or tragedy are forms of poetry “based in imitation, consisting entirely of gesture and pronunciation” [positum in imitatione, totum in gestu consistere atque pronunciatione]; Rainolds cites the Poetices libri septem directly in his exchange with Gager, particularly the point that, in Pliny the Younger’s day, “Old Latin comedy was recited [recitatem], yet not acted [actam].” Scaliger [1964], 11, 13; ROverthrow, 22. 186  ROxford, 210–13. 187  ROxford, 356–7. 188  ROxford, 170–3. 189  AR, 16–17.

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duty of teaching.”190 Vives’ judgment, which Rainolds reproduces exactly, is unambiguous: “This is what happened to Aristotle in the Rhetoric and the Poetics.”191 In these texts Aristotle apparently conflates the truth of the arts with custom; custom, in turn, is irreversibly corrupted by the people.192 Spectacle and stage-playing, however powerful or effective, are customary. If it is indeed true that Aristotle considers spectacle and stage-playing necessary and essential components of tragedy, then Aristotle himself, like his interpreters Castelvetro and Gentili, merely accommodates the truth of dialectic and rhetoric to the capacities of a vulgar audience. Rainolds frequently derides such attempts to accommodate truth to the desires and abilities of the people: “When Euripides said in the theater ‘What is disgraceful if it seems not so to those who do it?’, Plato immediately responded ‘Disgrace is disgrace, whether it seems so or not.’ ”193 Rainolds recounts this brief anecdote before reminding students that, “The voice of the people is the voice of a monster,” and histrionic tragedies merely meet this monster’s depraved demands.194 The tragedian, like the orator, “ought not to flatter the people [non populo lenocinari]; instead he ought to restrain [moderari] them.”195 Rainolds rebukes “Aristotle’s orator [who] does not treat things according to his own judgment but according to that of the plebians,” which is “to cure evil with evil” [malum sanare malo], to “yield to the perverse opinions of the petty plebians.”196 Otherwise precise arts are corrupted when poets accommodate rhetorical and dialectical lessons to the people. ENTER REYNALDO, MENDAX In Hamlet, Shakespeare delivers the most famous example of forensic tragedy in literature as the title character employs tragedy deliberately to discover the probable circumstances of his father’s demise.197 Moreover, Shakespeare reflects on the Oxford debates here, exploring the terms of forensic tragedy with direct reference to Rainolds’ assault on spectacle and stage-playing. In the earliest extant version of Hamlet, the First Quarto of 1603, Polonius’ servant is called “Montano”; in the Second Quarto of 1604/1605 and subsequent editions, however, the character is dubbed “Reynaldo” and the scene extended significantly. Scholars have long attempted to make sense of this change, and to understand the import of the ensuing dialogue between Polonius and Reynaldo.198 Some studies emphasize Polonius’ “Machiavellian methods” in II.i, ingenious even if “grotesquely out of proportion with their objectives,” as if Polonius’ schemes are representative of a 190  ROxford, 186–7. See also Vives [1555], I.339. 191  As Vives departs from Aristotle here, we see what Rainolds means when he claims, “Vives has been liberated by philosophy and is not bound to echo the words of any master.” ROxford, 186–7, 250–1. 192  For a similar claim see ROxford, 348–9. 193  ROxford, 354–5. 194  ROxford, 354–5. 195  ROxford, 346–7. I alter the translation. 196  ROxford, 346–7. I alter the translation. 197  See Eden [1986], 176–83. 198  Chambers [1930], 417–19. For other interpretations of the scene, some of which account for the revisions between Q1 and Q2, see Wormhoudt [1956], 113–14; Pennington [1996], 59–61.



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larger culture of deception at Elsinore, giving shape to the action and inaction in the tragedy.199 Others present Reynaldo as wily servant à la Terence or Plautus, a figure who emerges briefly to place Polonius in comic relief—“the senex, a foolish, garrulous, pointless old man” who is as absent-minded as he is “menacingly powerful.”200 Both interpretations are compelling. What has garnered considerably less attention, however, is whether “Reynaldo” is meant to resemble Rainolds, as well as the implications of this reference across the tragedy.201 Shakespeare was undoubtedly aware of the Oxford controversy, especially if Hamlet was indeed performed at Oxford.202 Moreover, the debates between Rainolds and Gentili were available and relevant beyond Oxford after the publication of Th’overthrow of stageplayes in 1599 as well as Matthew Gwinne’s tragedy Nero in 1603, wherein Gwinne explicitly opposes Rainolds’ anti-theatrical claims.203 Yet Shakespeare’s Reynaldo is not an anti-theatrical figure, which has hitherto made it difficult for readers to identify him with Rainolds or to understand the stakes of Shakespeare’s depiction. With an eye to the broader contours of the Oxford debates, however, Shakespeare’s reference is clear: Reynaldo traffics in mendacia, evoking the “Rainoldo” of Th’overthrow of stage-playes and the larger dispute with Gentili, the Rainolds for whom there is no justification for a lie and no effective distinction between mendacia and mendacia officiosa.204 Reynaldo bears more than a vague or passing resemblance to Rainolds. Shakespeare’s is a pointed satirical portrayal of a Puritan for whom falsehoods, spectacles, and stage-plays are fundamentally related. Moreover, the exchange between Polonius and Reynaldo frames the incisive study of tragedy and its uses that follows in Hamlet, in II.ii and III.ii, as the tragedians prepare and perform The Murder of Gonzago for the courtly audience at Elsinore. Hamlet recognizes the extent to which tragedy is a forensic project, inferential, and employs the tragedians appropriately, to attempt to discover the probable circumstances of his father’s death. Hamlet uses tragedy like Gentili’s poetic physician does mendacia officiosa. But Shakespeare also takes this opportunity to underline the failures and lacunae of period poetics. Here, as Rhodri Lewis makes clear in Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness, Shakespeare dramatizes “the insufficiency of received ethical and political wisdom,” mounting a thorough and extensive critique of “Humanist orthodoxy.”205 Moreover, as Shakespeare defends tragedy he lays 199  Charney [1969], 250. See also Cohen [1989], 41–2. 200  Charney [1988], 135–6. 201  There are a few choice studies and editions that suggest the connection between Rainolds and Reynaldo. Menzer [2008], 128–9; and Hibbard’s introduction in Shakespeare [1987], 75. 202  The title page of the First Quarto advertises Hamlet as it appeared “in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford” as well as in London “and elsewhere.” Boas long ago argued that, because of contemporary efforts against travelling companies of “Common Stage Players,” if Hamlet had indeed been performed at Oxford, the performance would have been hosted and funded by the town and not the University. But Boas’ claims have been contested and, even if correct, do not preclude academic audiences attending plays outside of the academies themselves. See Boas [1923], 14–19. 203  Srigley [1994], 42–4. 204  ROverthrow, 164 [given mistakenly as “264”], 168, 176. 205  In an ingenious reconsideration of The Mousetrap and its efficacy (to say nothing of Hamlet as a whole) Lewis discovers, first, that discourses of hunting and trapping were crucial to revenge tragedy in the sixteenth century, in a Senecan mode; and, second, that although Hamlet employs “his skills as a forensic huntsman” across the dramatic enterprise in Act III, he only manages to confirm his own

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subtle siege to Rainolds’ Aristotelian poetics insofar as he includes stage-playing and spectacle among its most powerful resources rather than among the obstacles to reason and revelation. At the outset of Act II Shakespeare introduces Rainolds’ namesake Reynaldo as a servile purveyor of falsehoods. Polonius directs Reynaldo to journey to Paris and to inquire about Laertes’ behavior. But he is to proceed indirectly, surreptitiously. Polonius stipulates that when Reynaldo first encounters the Danes or “Danskers” living in Paris, he is not to ask about Laertes directly, or to admit that he knows him. On the contrary, Reynaldo is to discover whether they are familiar with Laertes only by “encompassment and drift of question” (II.i.10), following the slow course or “drift” of the conversation, but invoking other senses of “drift” as well: “The conscious direction of action or speech to some end” as well as “A scheme, plot, design, device.”206 The discussion must appear casual, as if they happened upon Laertes effortlessly and without direction, despite the fact that this is precisely his objective. And if Reynaldo discovers that the expatriate Danes do indeed know Laertes, Polonius instructs him to “Take you as ’twere some distant knowledge of him,/ As thus, ‘I know his father and his friends/ . . . /And in part him, but,’ you may say, ‘not well’” (II.i.13–17), to pretend that he is only vaguely familiar with Laertes and his family. Polonius describes this plan as a “fetch of wit” (II.i.37), an intelligent device that employs falsehood, obfuscation, and deception to a purpose: to discover the truth of Laertes’ conduct in Paris.207 But Reynaldo’s indirection does not, as some suggest, necessitate “at each occurrence a period of inaction.”208 On the contrary, Polonius outlines a deliberate scheme involving skill and action, even if Reynaldo is to proceed by falsehood and indirection. Polonius licenses Reynaldo to spread false rumors about Laertes, to “put on him/ What forgeries you please,” provided that they are not too reprehensible (“none so rank/ As may dishonor him”). Moreover, the “forgeries” must be probable. Reynaldo is coached to “breathe [Laertes’] faults so quaintly/ That they may seem taints of liberty” (II.i.31–2), so the immoralities he attributes to Laertes must also number among the “usual slips,” the vices “most known/ To youth and liberty” (II.i.19–24). Only in this sense will they seem plausible. Because Laertes is accorded more “liberty” in Paris than in Denmark, far from the watchful eye of his father, Reynaldo must draw his “quaint” or artful forgeries from the catalog of pastimes subjective suspicions concerning past events. Across Chapter IV of Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness, Lewis demonstrates that, for Shakespeare, the inferential resources of poetry can rarely (if ever) establish truth objectively; “One might just as well conclude that those observing the action of a play, like those observing its observers, are predisposed to ‘botch the words up fit to their own thoughts’ (4.5.10).” Shakespeare thus has little faith in Rainolds’ Aristotelian vision of tragedy. Lewis [2017], 9, 10, 93–8, 231, 234. 206  The King asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern whether they are able to discover Hamlet’s intentions by “drift of conference” (III.i.i). This is the only instance of the noun “encompassment” (“The action of encompassing; ‘talking round’ a subject”) given in the OED. See “drift, n.” and “encompassment, n.” OED. 207  “fetch, n.1.” OED. 208  In other words, this does not help us understand Hamlet’s infamous and alleged delay. See Hubert [1991], 92; or Cardullo [2012], 487–95; and de Grazia [2007], 158–204.



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that any young man might pursue were he free to do so. The brief list of probable offenses resembles a record of Puritan complaints: “gaming,” “drinking, fencing, swearing,/ Quarrelling, drabbing” (II.i.24–6). Shakespeare subtly suggests that these are not grave sins but rather predictable puerile transgressions, behaviors that are expected of young men, particularly those who have not yet learned to control “The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,/ A savageness in unreclaimed blood” (II.i.33–4). The host of sins—which, not incidentally, often accompany “stageplaying” in Puritan treatments of vice—are given in Hamlet as excusable offenses common among young men. Polonius even calls them “slight sallies” (II.i.39), a far cry from, say, Phillip Stubbes’ strict admonishment of the same vices in The Anatomie of Abuses (1583).209 The brief encounter between Polonius and Reynaldo ends as the former communicates the gist of his device. “See you now,” Polonius orders, that: Your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth, And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out.  (II.i.59–63)

Reynaldo’s forgeries are intended to elicit candid and objective responses from Laertes’ acquaintances in Paris. By devising fictions, “baits” for truth, and by proceeding circuitously, Reynaldo is able to test for bias; it is a method employed by men “of wisdom and of reach,” an example of policy.210 Shakespeare emphasizes the use of falsehood, a strategy “of wisdom and of reach.” He foregrounds the forgeries that, together with “windlasses and with assays of bias,” enable Reynaldo to ascertain the truth about Laertes. Reynaldo uses falsehood to a dutiful end, and his task requires art and skill. He must “season” his forgeries so as to discover the truth without subjecting Laertes to “dishonour” or “scandal” (II.i.27–9). Once Polonius bids him farewell, Reynaldo is neither seen nor mentioned again in Hamlet. We learn nothing of his mission or of Laertes’ conduct in Paris. Arguably, the discussion between Polonius and Reynaldo is not integral to the larger plot of the tragedy at all. Nothing hinges on Reynaldo’s success or failure. The details of Laertes’ behavior in Paris are never reported. Yet the exchange is far from insignificant. As Polonius sets Reynaldo to the work of mendacia, and Shakespeare evokes the debates between Rainolds and Gentili, he foregrounds the powers of fiction and falsehood, recruiting technology and art in the service of truth. Insofar as Reynaldo employs deception and equivocation, aspects of mendacia that his eponym vehemently opposed, the scene unfolds at Rainolds’ expense. It is not a vague reference to Rainolds but a pointed reversal of Rainolds’ controversial views on mendacia; Shakespeare and company seize the opportunity to mock an opponent and to underscore the resources of fiction, fabulae, and indirection. Reynaldo’s method relies on precisely the “kind of lie which may sometimes be allowed 209  Stubbes [1583], M6v–M7r. 210  Notably, Shakespeare also employs a language of hunting and fishing here. See Lewis [2017], 75; and Klein [1997], 220–4.

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without wrong”—the mendacium which, in Gentili’s account, “is taught by all the ­philosophers, jurists, physicians, rhetoricians, poets, and others,” so crucial to Hamlet’s own plot in II.ii, involving the performance of The Murder of Gonzago.211 As such, the conversation between Reynaldo and Polonius proves a fitting introduction to the next scene as “the tragedians of the city” enter and Shakespeare extends the discussion from mendacia to stage-playing and spectacle, to falsehood and method in “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historicalpastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited” (II.ii.292, 333–7) as well as among the expatriate Danes in Paris. As in the Oxford debates, mendacia and theater are inextricable in Hamlet. “ T H E P L AY ’ S T H E T H I N G ” Polonius and Reynaldo employ “drift[s] of question” and “bait[s] of falsehood,” mendacia by other names, for forensic purposes. Hamlet in turn tests the apodeictic resources of tragedy before applying The Murder of Gonzago to forensic ends. In other words, tragedy is a tool that Hamlet uses to discover the truth of his father’s murder. Like Rainolds and Gentili, Hamlet seems aware that tragedy is intimately related to rhetoric and dialectic. However, from the outset Hamlet recognizes spectacle and stage-playing as integral to tragedy and absolutely crucial to discovery. Here, as in his depiction of the mendax Reynaldo, Shakespeare reverses Rainolds’ claims and demonstrates the utility of theater in the broadest sense—including the histrionic and spectacular elements which Rainolds methodically excludes from the tragic toolbox. As soon as the players arrive, Hamlet demonstrates both an appreciation and a sophisticated understanding of “passionate speech” (II.ii.369). He quotes a passage from a play which “was never acted, or, if it was, not above once, for the play I remember pleased not the million, ’twas caviare to the general”—an exemplary scene reflecting “an honest method” that is apparently beyond the capacities of an unappreciative multitude (II.ii.372–5, 380–3). Shakespeare shrewdly evokes the Oxford debates here, privileging use, praising the speech as “by very much more handsome than fine” (II.ii.382–3).212 Hamlet is no crude lover of violence and intrigue on stage, nor is beauty the foremost criterion for effective tragedy.213 With the word “handsome,” rather, he stresses the art and technique involved in composition as well as performance, and contrasts things handsome with things “fine,” delicate, “exquisitely fashioned.”214 The distinction is subtle. Things handsome and fine alike evince skill in an art. The difference lies in emphasis. “Handsome” foregrounds the use of an art or skill appropriate to a task; insofar as “handsome” is related to “handy” or “at hand,” Hamlet directs our attention to the use of a skill 211  Gentili [1933], 152. 212  Srigley illustrates that these lines refer directly to Gwinne’s preface to Nero wherein he also takes issue with Rainolds’ judgment of stage-playing. Srigley [1994], 41–2. 213  Bevington makes a similar point apropos of mimesis. See Bevington [2008], 79. 214  “handsome, adj., adv., and n.” and “fine, adj., n.2, and adv.” OED.



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itself in a process, employed to a purpose. A thing that is “fine” is a product of that skill or art, but the word describes an end rather than a process (there is even a pun here, on the Latin finis, or “end”). Thus when Hamlet praises the method that is “by very much more handsome than fine” he foregrounds the work of theater, as an art or skill directed to an end, one that is useful—even “handy”—rather than beautiful. Theater is not an end in itself here, nor is a play a well-wrought artifact to be admired for its intricacy or beauty. Tragedy, like The Tragedy of Gonzago in Act III, is a material resource at hand that Hamlet puts to use. The Murder of Gonzago furnishes Hamlet with proof of Claudius’ guilt, confirming the Ghost’s account of its murder in I.v. Of course. This is a commonplace in studies of Hamlet, rarely contested. But seldom is the use of the mouse-trap tragedy taken as a poetic principle in its own right as well as a means of advancing the plot by confirming spectral evidence. Hamlet emphasizes the apodeictic and dialectic provenance of tragedy and employs it to forensic ends. This is central to the project of tragedy in Hamlet, a work that is structured and informed by Elizabethan logic as well as skepticism. At times Hamlet speaks like Ramus, at times like Michel de Montaigne, dealing in syllogisms, axioms, and place logic to gauge certainty and uncertainty by degrees.215 The Murder of Gonzago seems to rank among these dialectical resources. Lawrence Danson makes this point elegantly in his Tragic Alphabet: “As a Wittenberg man,” Danson claims, “Hamlet knows the central importance of the syllogism as a tool of traditional (that is, scholastic) philosophy.”216 His lessons at Wittenberg certainly extended beyond dialectic to rhetoric and tragedy. Hamlet might have attended Melanchthon’s lectures on Euripides, imbibing dialectical and rhetorical lessons in and through drama, even affirming the Melanchthonian association between poetic fabulae and mendacia officiosa. Hamlet knows (or at least has heard) “That guilty creatures sitting at a play/ Have by the very cunning of the scene/ Been struck so to the soul that presently/ They have proclaimed their malefactions” (II.ii.523–7). It is in this sense that “The play’s the thing/ Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King” (II.ii.539–40). The play ­presents a probable argument, a tragic res or “thing,” that Hamlet expects to affect Claudius in its proximity to truth. Bracketing for a moment the dialectical resonance of “thing” or res, the word “play” in the phrase “The play’s the thing” is better read as a gerund than a noun, describing the action of playing rather than the discrete “play,” The Murder of Gonzago. This is how Hamlet uses the term at III.ii.95, when he asks Polonius whether he “played once I’th’ university.” There “play” is a synonym for enactment. Shakespeare foregrounds enactment and mimesis in II.ii. Indeed, Hamlet comes to his tentative conclusion, that “The play’s the thing/ Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King,” at the end of a speech that begins as an explicit reflection on mimetic enactment. Hamlet praises the tragedian who delivers the “fiction”—that is, Aeneas’ speech to Dido, an example of mendacium, like Reynaldo’s own “drift”— with such force. At the same time, he describes it as a “monstrous” performance 215  Cavell [2003], 3–5; Jacobus [1992], 1–20, 79–92.

216  Danson [1974], 28–9.

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insofar as the player “Could force his soul so to his own conceit . . . for nothing” (II.ii.488–92). The enactment is effective despite the absence of “motive” or corresponding experience in nature. In turn, a player endowed with “the motive and that for passion” which Hamlet has might “drown the stage with tears/ And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,/ Make mad the guilty and appal the free” (II.ii.496–9). The soliloquy in II.ii serves as a critical prolegomenon to Hamlet’s practical stage directions in III.ii where he instructs the tragedians to eschew excessive gesture (“do not saw the air too much with your hand”) and to cultivate smooth delivery (III.ii.1–8). He condemns the “robustious” style of acting, loud, liable to “tear a passion to tatters” (III.ii.9–10), to express a strong feeling so inadequately that its effect is lost upon even the most unsophisticated audiences.217 Nevertheless, they are also to avoid mere declamation or recitation, a style more suitable to “the town-crier” (III.ii.3) than to stage-players. Above all, the ­tragedians must: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance—that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing whose end, both at first and now, was and is to hold as ’twere the mirror up to Nature and to show Virtue her feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pleasure.  (III.ii.7, 17–24)

Here Hamlet attempts to articulate the origins as well as the ends of “playing” in general. A tragedy like The Murder of Gonzago is enacted “to hold as ’twere the mirror up to Nature.” While this suggests its place in a Mirror for Magistrates tradition (to which Hamlet and the play-within-the-play are no doubt related), Hamlet also defines drama in terms of mimesis. As in Aristotle’s Poetics [1448b.5], Hamlet indicates that playing “at first and now” is intended to “hold as ’twere the mirror up to Nature,” to achieve verisimilitude, to reproduce nature as exactly as possible; to the letter, he indicates that the imitation of nature is not only the means but also the purpose of playing. Hamlet does not explain how or why the imitation of nature gives pleasure, only that deviation from nature, “though it makes the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others” (III.ii.24–8). Hamlet privileges, for the moment, the approbation of the “judicious” over the pleasure of the multitude. As such he endorses a style of stage-playing that strives for the accurate imitation of humanity, not merely for its own sake but insofar as this serves the “necessary question of the play” (III.ii.40–1). 217  At no point does Hamlet instruct the players to abjure passion. Passion is natural and gives shape to the plot as well as the style of acting. To give way to excess is to “tear a passion to tatters,” whereas recitation does not give adequate voice to the passion. Hamlet’s advice to the players—“let your own discretion be your tutor” (III.ii.16–17)—recalls Polonius’ instructions to Reynaldo, particularly where he tells Reynaldo to proceed “as you may season it in the charge” (II.i.28). In both cases a mastery of the art in question depends on probability as well as skill. Reynaldo must cultivate probable rumors about the young Laertes without bringing him undue dishonor. The players must imitate nature without exaggeration, expressing a passion without letting the passion itself consume them and mar the performance. This is admittedly no easy task, as Hamlet himself declares: “Give me that man/ That is not passion’s slave and I will wear him/ In my heart’s core” (III.ii.67–9).



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According to Dieter Mehl, the dumb show that precedes The Murder of Gonzago is “characterized by directness and lack of ambiguity, especially in the primitive and straightforward pantomime.”218 The stage directions indicate that a player “pours poison in the [king’s] ear and leaves him” before the “queen returns, finds the king dead, [and] makes passionate action” (III.ii.128)—the same method by which Claudius dispatched Old Hamlet. Heretofore scholars have largely agreed that the dumb show is direct and unambiguous, in light of which Claudius’ inability to recognize himself in the action is seen as a failure on his part (conscious or unconscious). The dumb show is indeed direct, and it anticipates the action of The Murder of Gonzago exactly.219 But in this sense it is also incongruous with virtually every other depiction of human activity in Hamlet, from Hamlet’s meditations on inaction to Polonius and Rainaldo’s excursus on mendacia. Nothing in the political or ethical environment of Hamlet is direct or unambiguous. Hamlet scorns dumb shows, or at least those “inexplicable dumb-shows” which, together with “noise,” appeal to the capacities of the “groundlings” (III.ii.10–12). But the dumb show preceding The Murder of Gonzago is inexplicable for the courtiers at Elsinore as well. Ophelia is more confused than disconcerted, and Claudius does not know what to make of it. He asks, rather, “Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in’t?” (III.ii.226–7). It is inexplicable because it is honest and direct, because the players in the dumb show do not and cannot express the drifts and complexities of life at Elsinore, in Laertes’ Paris, or elsewhere in Shakespearean theater without recourse to “passionate speech” as well as “passionate action.” It is only when the players give voice to their parts, and supply motive and passion— when Lucianus (whom Hamlet calls “Gonzago”) poisons the player king “i’th’ garden for his estate” (III.ii.254)—that the events of The Mousetrap are intelligible and the performance, effective. The dumb show fails to catch the conscience of the king because it is neither a meaningful imitation of human life at Elsinore nor a compelling reconstruction of probable events, even if it depicts events as they actually occurred. Claudius is not moved by the silent performance. Hamlet clearly indicates that accurate and compelling imitation involves both speech and action. He describes ineffective stage-players “that neither having th’accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan nor man have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably” (III.ii.30–4). The lesson is clear: tragic imitation requires speech and action to accomplish its effect, and the dumb show fails to meet these criteria. Nature’s mirror is acoustic as well as spectacular and kinetic. Hamlet repeatedly underscores the importance of speech in enactment. He directs Polonius “to entreat your majesties/ To hear and see the matter” (III.i.22–3); he asks, “will the King 218  A perennial problem for careful readers, the ineffective dumb show preceding The Murder of Gonzago is one of several issues that defined scholarship on Hamlet in the twentieth century. See for instance Wilson [1936], 144–53; Greg [1917], 393–421; Mehl [1965], 110–20; Cox [1973]; and Cavell [2003], 179–91. 219  Mehl adds that “there are no other examples of this directly anticipatory use of the dumb show in Elizabethan drama.” It is thus in this sense unique and unprecedented. Mehl [1965], 113.

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hear this piece of work?” (III.ii.44–5); the very word “speech” comes to stand in metonymically for mimesis in tragedy (III.ii.77). Claudius even establishes how his conscience is moved by speech (“How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!” [III.i.49]). It should not surprise us, then, that the dumb show alone is ineffective. Shakespeare attempts here to dramatize a limited and incomplete imitation, and to illustrate how such an impoverished representation of events inevitably fails to achieve its end. Shakespeare does not dramatize a convincing dumb show that Claudius fails to understand. Rather, he dramatizes an incomplete and ineffective reconstruction of past events that, in turn, does not work. The dumb show in Hamlet, at once improbably direct and insufficiently mimetic, is incomprehensible to the audience at Elsinore. Shakespeare does not mock the unsophisticated taste of the groundlings here as much as he points to the equally unsophisticated judgment of men like Polonius, a veteran of the university stage who is also allegedly “for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps” (II.ii.438–9); who, unable to understand the complexity of mimetic enactment, marvels at the player who “turned his colour and has tears in’s eyes” (II.ii.457–8).220 Or of Claudius or Ophelia, who cannot make sense of the dumb show. Dumb shows did not appeal exclusively to groundlings (as Hamlet himself suggests) with a taste for “passionate action.” They were arguably more integral to the tragedies performed in the universities and the Inns of Court, much more so than with the repertory of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The most famous Elizabethan tragedies involving dumb shows—Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc (first performed at the Inner Temple in 1561) and George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh’s Jocasta (first performed at Gray’s Inn in 1566)—were written for the Inns of Court. These works, composed in conversation with Seneca and Euripides, explore the role of pantomime in antiquity.221 Educated playwrights incorporated dumb shows into otherwise popular tragedies—Tancred and Gismund (1591), attributed to Robert Wilmot, or Thomas Hughes’ The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587). And university plays, like Thomas Legge’s Richardus Tertius (1580), included kinetic scenes populated by mute characters. The ineffective dumb show in Hamlet, then, is not necessarily a reflection of popular theatrical practice. It is more so a depiction of an effete convention culled from antique tragedy as it appeared on stages in the Elizabethan universities or the Inns of Court.222 As Hamlet employs tragedy for forensic purposes, then, Shakespeare overturns Rainolds’ arguments concerning tragic enactment and dialectical and rhetorical precision. For Rainolds, spectacle and stage-play are illicit elements of performance that threaten actors, audiences, and the very resources of tragedy. For Shakespeare, however, passionate speech and passionate action, including spectacle and histrionic elements of stage-play, are the only ways to get at truth. Or, at the very least, they 220  Polonius is in this respect like Rainolds and other opponents of mimetic enactment who overstate the effect of the speech on the player himself. 221  Norland [2009], 90–1; Mehl [1965], 29–62, 72–87; and Zanobi [2014], vii–x, 203. 222  Rainolds probably shared Shakespeare’s low appraisal of dumb shows, but this convergence is actually irrelevant to my argument here as Shakespeare is most likely responding to Gager and Gentili as well as Rainolds, all of whom disparaged his trade.



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are the most effective ways to move an audience. The academies and Inns of Court, despite their own claims to rigor, precision, and honesty and their interest in antiquity, miss this entirely. Not only Rainolds but also Gentili and Gager disparage popular theater to no avail. Shakespeare defends spectacle and histrionic acting, the tools of his trade, on the grounds that these dramatic elements are what make tragedy useful. Returning at last to Hamlet’s couplet, “The play’s the thing/ Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King,” the success of the tragedy, taken together with the failure of the dumb show, hinges on a histrionic sense of “play.” Because the forensic reconstruction of motive and causality rests on an accurate and compelling imitation of nature, it requires a more lively and spectacular form of enactment than that offered by the dumb show. It requires precisely the form of enactment furnished by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, soon to be the King’s Men, spectacular, passionate, and ecstatic. In Shakespeare’s couplet, the term “thing” seems to renew the dialectical relevance of Rainolds’ lectures on the Rhetoric, or the commentaries on the Poetics. Rhetoric, dialectic, and poetics teach that arguments, composed of things [res], or of words and things [res et verba], are fundamental to the shared task of proof. For Rainolds, spectacle and stage-play are not only sinful—they muddle matters and obscure res et verba alike. Play is depraved and distracting. For Shakespeare, however “play’s” the thing itself, comprising the argument, corresponding to the spectacular and histrionic forms of life that are common in nature and fiction alike.

PA RT I I [E P I TA S I S ] TRAGEDY AND THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHY

4 Necessity, Between Tragedy and Predestination Daniel Heinsius and De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611) Philosophum esse, Tragici munus. The office of the tragic poet is philosophical. Daniel Heinsius, De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611)1

Daniel Heinsius’ De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611), arguably the most important study of tragedy published in the seventeenth century, belongs to the Arminian Controversy, to the intense debates over grace and predestination that rocked the nascent Dutch Republic between 1609 and 1619. It is not, however, a typical theological work. Heinsius does not offer any statements on doctrine nor does he explicitly address the core theological or political ideas that defined the Controversy. Put simply, neither providence nor predestination is its object, nor does he meditate directly on how tragedies in Greek, Latin, or any modern vernacular expose any real truth concerning election or reprobation. But De Tragoediae Constitutione is nonetheless a detailed treatment of causality and agency in which poetics—and tragedy in particular—emerges as a privileged site for thinking about probability and necessity, nature, and the terms and limits of human knowledge, directly relevant to contemporary theological debates. Heinsius offered poetics as a substantive alternative to the divisive technical arguments concerning God’s providence, election, and reprobation that threatened the future of the Republic. Although it could never replace theology entirely, tragedy trains our attention to shared questions and resources; it foregrounds notions of agency and causality that also inform salient debates concerning providence, predestination, and revelation. In competing theologies of predestination, for instance, theologians sought to locate human action in a larger divine theater, disputing the degree to which God is responsible for salvation and damnation, arguing whether and how divine decrees or human agencies are necessary or contingent. Heinsius attends to related 1  PT, 152; and DTC, 216. While I frequently alter or replace the Sellin/McManmon translations throughout the chapter I continue to refer to the 1971 text for the ease of the reader. Because it is more familiar I use the 1643 title (De Tragoediae Constitutione) throughout the chapter, not the initial 1611 title: De Tragica Constitutione.

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distinctions between human and divine action, but he relocates these disputes to tragedy. Where concepts like election and reprobation traffic in mystery and tax the limits of human understanding, tragedy enables readers to comprehend actions in terms of cause and effect and to distinguish among situations where knowledge of divine matters may or may not be relevant. Moreover, tragedy offers poetic or critical approaches to problems that yield no easy theological solutions. Though the boundaries between the disciplines remain intact, Heinsius redirects energy and attention to tragedy, which emerges in both De Tragoediae Constitutione and his sole biblical tragedy Herodes Infanticida as a powerful mode of investigating nature and causality—indeed, totality—which more quarrelsome contemporaries relegated to theology. Although his life and pursuits remain obscure to many modern scholars, Heinsius ranked among the most important intellectuals in Northern Europe in the seventeenth century. Born in Ghent in 1580, Heinsius numbered among the many Flemish Protestants who fled Spanish military occupation as Philip II attempted to restore order and authority in the Low Countries. His family ultimately settled in Vlissingen in Zeeland, where he was taught by Reformed schoolmasters; between 1596 and 1598, moreover, he studied at Franeker University in Friesland, where he attended lectures by the professor of law Henricus Schotanus but devoted himself almost entirely to Greek letters.2 Heinsius only began to realize his scholarly vocation after he left Franeker for Leiden University in 1598, where he remained until his death in 1655. As a student he came under the guidance of the professor of Latin and Greek, Bonaventura Vulcanius; the poet Janus Dousa, the first librarian of the Leiden University library; and the preeminent intellectual in Northern Europe, the historian and philologist Joseph Justus Scaliger. The young Heinsius made a formidable impression on his new mentors, and Scaliger in particular shaped his early career, honing his burgeoning interests in poetry and antique letters into a sharp philological criticism, attentive to history as well as philosophy. Regarded as Scaliger’s friend and protégé, the elder scholar welcomed his beloved pupil into a wider circle of intellectuals in and around Leiden, including Cornelis van der Myle, Petrus Scriverius, Isaac Casaubon, and Hugo Grotius. A formidable philologist, Heinsius soon produced critical editions of Silius Italicus (1600), the Greek poet Nonnus Panopolitanus (1605), Hesiod and his antique interpreters (1603), and the Greek bucolic poets Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion, together with the later Alexandrian poet Simmias of Rhodes (1603). He also emerged as a brilliant and effective poet in his own right. His 1602 tragedy Auriacus sive Libertas Saucia [Orange or Wounded Freedom], on the 1584 assassination of William of Orange, was performed and printed to great acclaim; his Latin elegies and Dutch emblemata amatoria, moreover, were renowned long before the publication of his celebrated Nederduytsche Poemata (1616). His talents patent, it is perhaps unsurprising that Heinsius was named Professor Extraordinarius of Poetry at Leiden University in 1603, even without receiving a degree.3

2  Meursius [1625], 211–12.

3  Sellin [1968], 17.



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Thus began Heinsius’ long and successful career at Leiden, the epicenter of the Arminian Controversy as it took shape in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Tellingly, his promotion coincided with Jacobus Arminius’ own contentious appointment in May 1603. As Heinsius turned his attention to Greek poetry and its interpreters, Arminius lectured on the object of theology and the necessity of faith for salvation.4 Heinsius soon assumed the office of Professor Extraordinarius of Greek in 1605 and, later, acquired the position of University Librarian in 1607—lucrative advancements that brought him more notoriety across Northern Europe. During this same period, the growing acrimony between Arminius and his interlocutors—particularly the Leiden theologian Franciscus Gomarus— dominated theological debate at and around the University.5 By 1605, when Arminius was elected Rector Magnificus, arguments concerning Arminianism were virtually unavoidable—so much so that Arminius ended his tenure with a timely oration “On Reconciling Religious Dissensions among Christians” (1606), calling for a national synod, pointing to the significance of the Controversy in and beyond the University.6 Given his attachments at Leiden, Heinsius’ projects and commitments across the decade reflect this theological climate. His studies of Platonic theology coincide with Arminius’ ascendancy at Leiden, and his critical edition of Maximus of Tyre’s Dissertations (1607) should be seen as a philosophical contribution to the debates.7 After Arminius read his definitive Declaration of Sentiments at the Hague in 1608—indeed, even after his death in 1609—both Leiden University and the Republic at large only became further embroiled in disputes concerning his thought and legacy. During this same period Heinsius devoted himself even more to theological pursuits.8 His own international influence waxed across the 4  Bangs [1971], 256–8. 5  The best account of Gomarus’ influential career in Leiden remains van Itterzon [1929], 47–199. 6  Bangs [1971], 275–6, 280. 7  In Dissertation XXII, for instance, as he considers “whether anyone might be made good by divine lot” [An aliquis divinitus sorte bonus fiat], Maximus extolls divine perfection and confirms that no less a man than Socrates only “embraced virtue” [virtutem amplexus est] because he was “chosen by divine judgment” [divino electus suffragio]. Good is divine, Maximus argues, and thus “evils rise from inherent depravity therein” [mala vero ex innata illi improbitate oriantur]; the fault [culpam] is in the depraved man, and “leaves God without guilt” [Deum extra noxiam relinquat]. Many of the idiosyncratic Platonist’s philosophical theses were relevant to the project of De Tragoediae Constitutione. In the second century, Maximus already expressed confusion regarding fate and divinity in tragedy, wherein necessity and freedom are insouciantly intermingled, when an allegedly free man acts as “a man in chains who spontaneously follows his leaders.” Indeed, in Heinsius’ translation of Maximus, the opinions of men [hominum opiniones] “perform” or “imitate” [ludunt] necessity inadequately when they mistake the role of fate or “Parca” in their lives. Maximus claims that these forces are “nothing else than the specious pretexts of human depravity, which refers the cause of its own baseness to a divine nature, to the fates, and the furies”; they are, in fact, simply names that “express the power of fate” [fatalem exprimunt potentiam] and are nonetheless “carried around in our soul” [in animo nostro circumgestamus]—that is, names for internal forces and processes. In tragedy, these are often confused or conflated. Thus, Maximus declares, “I seem to understand necessity, yet I am not able to describe it accurately” [necessitatem illam videre mihi videor, apte tamen exprimere non possum], a significant barrier to philosophical precision. Here Heinsius offers a long critical note on Platonic deity and divination. Maximus Tyrius [1614], 34–5, 221, 230–1, 256, 258, 37–41, “Notae et Emendationes ad Maximum Philosophum”; [1804], I.37–9, I.222–3, II.53. 8  His major contributions to theology came much later—his critical edition of Nonnus’ Greek paraphrase of the Gospel of John, Aristarchus Sacer (1627), for instance, as well as his massive commentary on the New Testament, the Sacrarum Exercitationum ad Novum Testamentum (1639). See also de Jonge [1971].

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ensuing decade and, given his facility with ancient languages and (after 1612) his new eminent position as Professor of Politics and History, he occupied a prominent place in the European Respublica Litterarum Sacrarum.9 He produced a foundational critical edition of Clement of Alexandria (1616) as well as Latin homilies on Christ’s nativity and Passion in 1613, popular enough to warrant translation into Dutch, English, and French. Most pressing, however, is his mounting preoccupation with tragedy across this period. Heinsius delivered an oration on the value of tragedy, De utilitate quae e lectione tragoediarum percipitur [Concerning the usefulness which is perceived from reading tragedies]; worked on his sole biblical tragedy, Herodes Infanticida; and completed critical editions of Seneca (1611), Horace (1612), and Terence (1618), all of which investigated the terms and limits of tragedy.10 De Tragoediae Constitutione, however, is Heinsius’ sharpest and most focused treatment of tragedy, a study of the relationship between tragedy and religion in which he offers a poetic approach to pervasive theological problems. De Tragoediae Constitutione warrants introduction. A monumental work, it was first appended to Heinsius’ critical edition of Aristotle’s Poetics—a thorough volume that also featured an annotated, emended, reorganized Greek text as well as a new Latin translation, all intended to foreground its consistencies and renew its relevance for modern audiences.11 But De Tragoediae Constitutione is not a textual commentary like comparable works by Francesco Robortello (1548), Pietro Vettori (1560), or even Ludovico Castelvetro (1570). Heinsius consigns many technical philological matters to the notes, opting instead to develop a sustained critical account of Aristotle’s project, with reference to extant Greek and Latin tragedy, ancient and modern.12 His knowledge of this archive is, by seventeenth-century standards, sophisticated and exhaustive.13 But Heinsius’ chief contribution lies in 9  Shuger [1994], 13–15. 10  The very title “De utilitate quae e lectione tragoediarum percipitur” may refer to contemporary theological debates, as “electione” is easily substituted for the given “e lectione,” invoking the language of election and reprobation without any major changes to the title: “Concerning the usefulness which is perceived from reading tragedies” becomes “Concerning the usefulness which is perceived in the choice of tragedies”. Also, in his annotated edition of Horace’s Opera, Heinsius placed the Horatian Ars poetica in dialogue with the Aristotelian Poetics without harmonizing their distinct claims and archives. Bangs [1971], 307–16; Meter [1984], 156–62. 11  Heinsius attempts to revise the order of the Poetics, reflecting on the text established in the 1508 Aldine editio princeps. See Aristotle [2012], 39–61; Sellin [1974], 72–93; Meter [1984], 137–43. 12  De Tragoediae Constitutione takes shape as a letter to Rochus Honerdus, an influential councilor who served on the Gecommitteerde Raden of Holland and West-Friesland and who also composed a biblical tragedy, Thamara (1611), to which Heinsius and Hugo Grotius contributed dedicatory poems. In this sense, Heinsius’ work does bear some resemblance to Antonio Riccobini’s (1587) Poetica Aristotelis Latine Conversa [Aristotle (1970)]. 13  Indeed, in addition to Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, “Seneca Tragicus” is a frequent point of reference, as Heinsius had recently completed his mentor Scaliger’s edition of Seneca’s tragedies, adding his own notes and animadversions. He also refers to choice early modern compositions. Heinsius praises Scaliger’s translations of Sophocles’ Ajax (1573) and Lycophron’s demanding Alexandra (1566) as well as Florens Christianus’ versions of Sophocles’ Philoctetes (1586), Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (1585), and Euripides’ Andromache (1594)—Greek fabulae elegantly rendered into appropriate Latin, recalling the splendid tragic style of Pacuvius and Accius. And Heinsius refers to original works as well, to Marc-Antoine Muret’s Iulius Caesar (1552), George Buchanan’s Jephtha



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his insistence that the Poetics could and should be collated with Aristotle’s other works, that the Poetics offers a vision of tragedy as a philosophical treatment of “man in general and his actions” as well as “whatever can happen to man.”14 Put simply, tragedy emerges as a philosophical resource in De Tragoediae Constitutione. While Heinsius draws upon other disciplines to understand the Poetics, he resists the urge to harmonize rhetoric and poetics or to reduce tragedy in particular to any other art. Moreover, he distinguishes between Aristotle’s sharp definition of tragedy and those degraded approaches that overestimate “the furniture of the old theater, stupendous and abundant, those measures, gestures, songs, and dances that  were adopted from without and which Aristotle called ‘instruments of spectacle’ ”—instruments which Heinsius, after Aristotle, identifies as “careful deceptions” as well as “the poisonous substance in any tragedy” [veneficium aliquod tragoediam & accuratas praestigias].15 Heinsius, in other words, marks the distinction between tragedy and spectacle, censuring those dramatic excesses that compromise tragic precision. The 1611 work takes shape in fidelity to a critical Aristotle, “the first both to note faults (the mark of a precise critic), and from the merits of many to construct a single art (the marks of a true philosopher).”16 Philosophy and criticism converge in the Poetics, in Aristotle’s treatment of tragedy. Across his inventive exegesis of the Poetics, Heinsius examines Aristotle’s mandate, that tragic poets depict things as they can or should be, according to nature. Tragedies traffic in universals—not simply things that exist, but as they exist, by necessity or probability. Throughout the work Heinsius affirms the fundamental correspondence between tragedy and nature and, in turn, establishes the philosophical province of tragedy, more so than any critic before him. A tragedy is not merely a theatrical presentation of things doleful or grave. It must of course be serious enough to induce pity [misericordia] and horror [horror], the proper tragic affects, but this famed purgation depends much more on the tragic poet’s ability to approximate nature through imitation, to depict conditions and relations as they exist.17 Tragedy works only insofar as it is “realistic,” as it approximates reality. And tragic mimesis is distinct from other forms of imitation insofar as this “realism” refers to plot as a complete action, not to discrete elements of a plot. A portrait (an imitation of a particular person), for instance, might depict a man with striking clarity, capturing aspects of his particular appearance and even giving some sense of his character, but a tragedy (an imitation of a complete action) depicts universal conditions by which people and things exist and relate to one another. Laying bare a more fundamental scene of relation, a tragedy does not simply exhibit a series of events but is rather an object lesson in causality, inviting audiences to consider how elements fit together to comprise a single complete action. Again, the tragic poet does not merely depict particular things or events but rather the sive Votum (1554) and Baptistes sive Calumnia (1577), Rochus Honerdus’ Thamara tragoedia (1611), and his own Auriacus sive Libertas Saucia (1602). See Seneca [1611], 483–99. For the history of the attribution of the tragedies, see Machielsen [2014], 61–85. Grafton [1983], 114–18; Jacobsen [1973], 153–63; PT, 124; DTC, 186. 14  PT, 152; DTC, 216. 15  DU, 119. 16  PT, 7; DTC, 3. 17  PT, 11; DTC, 10.

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general conditions and relations by which things can or do exist or happen. On these grounds Heinsius confirms that the constitution of the plot, Aristotle’s μῦθος or fabula, is the most important aspect of tragedy. But Heinsius is not the naïve “myth-lover” [ὁ φιλόμυθος] of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, drawn to plots that only inspire wonder; instead, he insists that the best plots conform to nature, which is generally accessible to human understanding insofar as it unfolds according to reason, not “portentous and prodigious wonder” [portentosam . . . & prodigiosam admirationem].18 Wonder—Aristotle’s θαῦμα and Heinsius’ admiratio—certainly has a place in De Tragoediae Constitutione, but it is best effected by a demonstration of nature, in a depiction of events that unfold “contrary to expectation yet on account of one another,” and certainly not “through show of chance and fortune, because even among chance events we find most awesome those which seem to have happened by design” [1452a.4–8].19 The careful tragedian cultivates wonder by means of philosophy. In this chapter I illustrate, first, how Heinsius draws the divisive theological issues of the Arminian Controversy into the critical ambit of De Tragoediae Constitutione. In his theological works, Heinsius criticized Arminius and his acolytes, counselling his contemporaries to remain silent on “unnecessary” questions of salvation and damnation, conceding that election and reprobation defy human understanding. Where Heinsius foregrounds mystery in theology, however, he simultaneously relegates matters pertaining to causality, nature, and knowledge to poetics, and to tragedy in particular. I thus demonstrate how Heinsius establishes tragedy as a philosophical and critical enterprise. In his treatment of spectacle and stage machinery, as he adjudicates among more or less acceptable instances of divine intervention in plots ancient and modern, Heinsius asks readers to think critically about contrivances and dei ex machinis that threaten the totality of complete and unified plots. Inadequate plots inspire only wonder or confusion in a medium—tragedy—that should enable comprehension as it simulates nature with feeling and precision. Even as he focuses on divine intervention in tragedy, Heinsius draws attention from divinity per se to the human experience of the plot, challenging readers to consider how events take shape as well as the limits of human knowledge. Heinsius uses tragedy to mark the critical distinction between what can be known and what is not necessary to know. Of course, Heinsius is too careful and thorough a historical reader to conflate Reformed theology and antique poetics.20 Instead he points to more fundamental, universal points in De Tragoediae Constitutione, assumptions about nature, necessity, and probability that span disciplines. It is on these grounds that Heinsius relocates certain studies of nature, 18  In an oration on history, Heinsius refers directly to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where the Philosopher argues that, because it was “through wonder [διὰ . . . τὸ θαυμάζειν] that men now begin and originally began to philosophize,” “the myth-lover [ὁ φιλόμυθος] is in a sense a philosopher, since myths [μῦθος] are composed of wonders.” Heinsius [1614], B[1]r–B[1]v; [1943], 12–13; Aristotle [1933], 12–13; PT, 46–7; DTC, 71. 19  AP, 62–3; DTC, 261. 20  Although later controversies concerning his Herodes Infanticida, Tragoedia (1632) reflect his willingness to blur the distinctions between studies sacred and profane. See Balzac [1658]; and Salmasius [1644].



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causality, and agency under the aegis of poetics rather than theology. Noting “how few there are today who recognize the usefulness of true and real criticism [verae germanaeque Criticae] or turn to serious matters [seria],” Heinsius suggests that his critical treatment of plot and machinae is indeed related to contemporary crises of faith and understanding.21 Even as he draws attention to causality in nature, however, Heinsius’ project is not, as it has been recently argued, a secular enterprise.22 Neither philosophy nor tragedy replace theology. Tragedy enables Heinsius to recalibrate theological questions and to employ critical and poetic resources to reframe contentious doctrines from a different perspective. This is evident in Heinsius’ own Herodes Infanticida in which he incorporates critical elements from De Tragoediae Constitutione to distinguish between human and divine agencies in the Gospels. As he celebrates tragedy’s philosophical precision in De Tragoediae Constitutione, Heinsius dwells on natural cause and effect in Herodes Infanticida, depicting Herod’s massacre of the children in Jerusalem as the end of an intelligible human action—namely, Herod’s response to a Scriptural prophecy. Where theological presentations of the episode offer consolation, numbering the infants among the elect as they underline the mystery of Christ’s incarnation and redemption, Heinsius consigns salvation to the margins of the tragedy, emphasizing instead the terrifying, pitiable, and all-too-human passions and preoccupations that precipitated the massacre. Herodes Infanticida is not a comforting study of predestination or providence but rather a moving tragic account of power and interpretation, tracing mundane notions of probability and necessity across the Scriptural fabula. Tragedy does not render God’s providence intelligible. Instead, Herodes Infanticida illustrates the natural conditions under which the events of Matthew 2 take shape, reframing Scripture as a play of human actions and passions. Without endorsing an alternative theological approach— Heinsius’ theology remains decidedly orthodox—Herodes Infanticida dramatizes the limits of human knowledge and agency as well as the dangers of speculating about matters beyond these boundaries, so pertinent to religious and political debate across the Arminian Controversy. T H E A R M I N I A N C O N T ROV E R S Y A S T R A G E D Y To the letter, Heinsius claims, the very words “predestination” and “free will” have no place in tragedy. Terms like “praedestinare” and “libera voluntas” are technical, “manufactured for the disciplines,” foreign to a tragic style that aims at “frankness” [candor].23 The tragic poet should eschew such “unusual” [inusitatas] language in favor of “earnest and serious expressions” [seriae ac graves], realizing a speech that “is part of nature itself insofar as it represents mores according to propriety [ex decoro] and thus affects the innermost senses.”24 While they are certainly appropriate to theology, terms like “predestination,” “election,” or “reprobation” are as abstract 21  PT, 70; DTC, 110. 22  Somos [2011], 104–51. 23  PT, 119, 116; DTC, 175–6, 170. 24  PT, 120, 90; DTC, 178, 117.

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and unwieldy in tragedy as they are remote to daily life. They are elusive and confusing—so much so that they “now yield tragedies beyond the stage” [nunc extra scenam dant Tragoedias], tragedies that are “indeed very complex” [Implexas quidem admodum] as well as “intricate” or “obscure” [Intricatas].25 With this reference to tragedies “beyond the stage,” Heinsius points directly to the Arminian Controversy, to the divisive debates concerning predestination that resonated throughout the Dutch Reformed Church as well as the nascent Dutch Republic in the early seventeenth century, debates that intensified as he prepared De Tragoediae Constitutione for publication in 1611. Even as Heinsius himself was drawn into the debates, alienating friends and colleagues at Leiden University, he recognized the tragedy of current events. And Heinsius called these tragedies “complex” and “intricate” because it was difficult to trace the contours of the Controversy. While it began as a theological dispute over predestination and grace, the entire region was soon embroiled in a complicated struggle concerning sovereignty and power, playing out in various ways across the diverse local and institutional levels of the Dutch Republic. It is thus “complex” in the ordinary sense. But “complex” and “intricate”—to say nothing of “tragedy” itself—are fraught terms in De Tragoediae Constitutione, and Heinsius’ reference to the “complex” tragedy of the Arminian Controversy is also technical insofar as a complex tragedy involves a “reversal” [in contrarium mutatio] or περιπέτεια: in this case, sixteenth-century Reformers emphasized a series of theological terms in the interest of truth and piety, but their efforts yielded conflict and discord among their acolytes.26 Heinsius suggests that the terms themselves—“predestination” and “free will,” among others—are too obscure for public discourse, too intricate for political administration. Disputes over predestination and will belong exclusively to theology. Beyond this discipline, they foment conflict, invite error, and lead to tragedy. Heinsius certainly did not remain neutral or silent in political and institutional affairs related to predestination, election, and reprobation. He was declaredly anxious when Arminius was appointed to the theology faculty at Leiden, even though Arminius commanded authority and respect in and beyond the Dutch Republic.27 Arminius studied at Geneva and Basel (with Theodore Beza and Johann Gryneus, respectively) before his ordination as minister in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam in 1588, and within a few years of his arrival at Leiden he was elected Rector Magnificus of the university, a testament to his reputation and standing despite his divisive sermons and theological claims.28 Although Arminius himself never broke with the Dutch Reformed Church, he offered formidable alternatives to regnant Reformed doctrines, objecting foremost to the version of predestination in which God decreed the election and reprobation of mankind independent of the creation

25  Heinsius moves subtly from the technical term “implexa,” which he employs in his translation of the Poetics to describe complex or “πεπλεγμένοι” plots, to “intricata,” the perfect passive participle of “intrico,” which suggests a sense of perplexity and obscurity as well as the more familiar “involved,” “intricate,” or “entangled.” PT, 119; DTC, 176, 262. 26  PT, 34; DTC, 48. 27  Sellin [1968], 22–3. 28  For biographical details, see Stranglin and McCall [2012]; and Bangs [1971].



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and the fall of man.29 In other words, Arminius rejected the notion that God predestined men to salvation or damnation before they existed, unconditionally—a vision which, he claimed, not only makes God the author of sin but also impugns divine justice, denigrates human faith, and diminishes the priority and glory of Christ’s death and resurrection. Instead, Arminius emphasized God’s foreknowledge of sin, offering in turn a conditional notion of election while recognizing a greater degree of human agency—namely, the ability to maintain or lose faith as well as to resist God’s manifest grace. Many prominent Dutch Calvinists, including his Leiden colleague Gomarus, vehemently disputed his theological propositions, associating Arminius with Pelagianism, Roman Catholicism, and Socinianism. At the same time, the debates concerning predestination and grace tested the limits of tolerance, both within the Dutch Reformed Church and across diverse states and congregations, exacerbating dissent and frustrating the provisional balance between political unity and freedom of conscience that marked the earliest period of the Dutch Republic. The Arminian Controversy did not end with Arminius’ death in 1609.30 Disputes over predestination and orthodoxy only became more contentious and pervasive across the ensuing decade, fracturing friendships, congregations, and political institutions, exacerbating existing arguments, and placing neighbors and countrymen at odds. Many of Arminius’ own theological works appeared in print only ­posthumously, and the political stakes of the debates redoubled when a party of forty-four preachers delivered a remonstrance to the States of Holland in July 1610. Their Remonstrance, composed by Johannes Uyttenbogaert on behalf of his fellow Remonstrants, rearticulated Arminius’ theses against Gomarus, contesting Reformed theological claims concerning predestination, faith, and agency and demanding legal protection, even suggesting that church matters fall under the jurisdiction of the civil government. The Remonstrants affirmed conditional predestination and argued that Christ died for all men, that his grace extends to all; the reprobate, in turn, are able to resist this grace and remain unregenerate—they are not denied God’s grace from eternity, as Gomarus and company intimated. The Remonstrants also called for a national synod, under the aegis of civil authority, to amend confessions and catechisms and to curtail division and dissent. The Gomarists responded in March 1611 with a Contra-Remonstrance, asserting God’s unconditional election from eternity and the irresistibility of grace before roundly dismissing the notion that civil magistrates could force the church to revise creeds or retain dissenting ministers.31 As parties formed, political and economic concerns became inextricable from theological arguments. The ensuing debates were heated and ubiquitous, inspiring, as Freya Sierhuis illustrates, an extraordinary array of poems, pamphlets, and dialogues that addressed the theological and political terms of the debates as well as their economic impact and contentious social 29 Theologians and historians of religion tend to identify Arminianism as an alternative to Reformed Orthodoxy rather than a version of Calvinism. 30  Israel [1995], 421–77; Benedict [2002], 305–16; Sierhuis [2015], 36–52. 31  Sierhuis’ reading of the Contra-Remonstrance is illuminating. See Sierhuis [2015], 51.

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dimensions. In this sense “Arminianism” was not only relevant to ministers and magistrates but also to anxious parents, terrified at the prospect of their infant’s reprobation, and to ordinary citizens, wary of economic disruptions and fundamental changes in the shape and constitution of the young Republic.32 Heinsius made no secret of his aversion to Arminianism, accepting Gomarus’ interpretation of Dutch Reformed Orthodoxy—the Contra-Remonstrant position, affirming predestination as an eternal decree of God’s will that preceded creation, emphasizing unconditional election and the irresistibility of grace. Some of this is undoubtedly personal, as his mentor Scaliger maintained a warm (if condescending) relationship with Gomarus across his tenure at Leiden.33 When Heinsius acted on these commitments, he subsequently estranged Remonstrant friends and colleagues at Leiden like Hugo Grotius and Gerardus Johannes Vossius. Leiden University attracted international attention, not only among diverse Reformed congregations across Northern Europe but also among politicians with investments in Dutch unity and orthodoxy. When the divisive theologian Conrad Vorstius was chosen to succeed Arminius as chair in theology at Leiden University, for instance, King James VI and I intervened in the matter, declaring Vorstius a heretic and demanding his dismissal in 1612.34 The arguments between Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants only intensified across the decade, coming to a head at the Synod of Dort in 1618–19 and precipitating the fall of the prominent politician Johann van Oldenbarnevelt, the Land’s Advocate of Holland who supported the Remonstrants (against the Stadthouder Maurits of Nassau, Prince of Orange, who supported the Contra-Remonstrants).35 With the fall of the Oldenbarnevelt regime, Remonstrant regents and politicians were effectively purged from city councils throughout Holland and the synod became imminent; when the synod was finally convened at Dort (or Dordrecht) in November 1618, it was dominated by Contra-Remonstrants. The Remonstrants were condemned as disruptive and cavillous and Arminianism decisively refuted, article-by-article. Heinsius played a prominent role at the Synod in Dordrecht. He served as Secretary of the Lay Commissioners there and was thus directly involved in the proceedings against the Arminians.36 He supported the judgment and, after delivering a celebratory homily on election at Leiden University in June 1619, readily participated in the “Reformation” of the University according to the synod.37 32  de Boer [2011], 261–90. 33  de Jonge [1997], 258–66; Grafton [1993], 375–6. 34  James maintained a keen interest in Dutch affairs and sent a (British) delegation to the Synod of Dort, as did Reformed congregations in Geneva and across Germany (among others), to help bring the theological and political crises to an end. Shriver [1970], 449–74; Patterson [1997], 260–3; Sellin [1968], 24. 35  By this point, the Remonstrant party actually opposed a national synod, although it initially numbered among their demands. 36  His adversaries questioned his piety, censured his lifestyle, and accused him of political opportunism. Geeraardt Brandt, for instance, later wrote that the Remonstrants considered Heinsius “very unstable in the business of religion, turning and returning, praising and dispraising things, as the wind of prosperity happen’d to veer about, and associating himself with this or that party, as he found it for his interest.” Brandt [1722], 12. 37  Heinsius [1657], 431–50; “Sir Dudley Carleton to Sir George Calvert, 26 June/6 July 1619” in Milton [2005], 370; and Brandt [1723], 42–3.



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Heinsius even helped prepare the definitive version of the Acta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae for publication.38 However “tragic” current events seemed to him in 1611, Heinsius played a significant role in the Arminian Controversy as it unfolded across the decade.39 Even so, Heinsius rarely foregrounds “predestination” in the theological works that he published during this period, dwelling instead on the limits of human understanding. In a 1613 homily on Christ’s nativity he draws attention to the mystery of the Incarnation, a doctrine which Aristotle “would not have believed” [non crederet] and which Plato “would have undoubtedly mocked” [sine dubio risisset], proving that “wisdom is an obstacle to faith” [fidei obstaculum est sapientia].40 Against appeals to “knowledge” or “reason alone,” Heinsius praises the “divine wisdom which in the mystery of salvation so thoroughly excluded human wisdom.”41 Here, as well as in a 1613 homily on Christ’s Passion, Heinsius p ­ resents salvation as a contemplative mystery, emphasizing Christ’s singular divine sacrifice on behalf of humanity without touching directly on predestination, election, reprobation, providence, perseverance, or the terms of Christ’s atonement.42 Even in his 1619 homily on election, delivered after the judgment at Dordrecht, Heinsius underlines the mystery of election and God’s secret [arcana] reprobation, illustrating the degree to which election is best understood as the first fruit of “the pure abyss, God’s love” [mera . . . abyssus amor Dei].43 This is manifest in his Dutch Lof-Sanck van Iesus Christus (1616) as well, where Heinsius beseeches Christ to “bind my heart and mind to heaven with a strong band, with cables and ropes of true certainty and a perfect trust” before asking him to “Restrain our foolish delusion, restrain our inclinations, so that we not seek other than what is grounded in reason.”44 Heinsius pledges to “let Esau be,” to avoid questions concerning God’s love for Jacob and his hatred for Esau, familiar Scriptural loci in Reformed treatments of election and reprobation; he duly promises “neither to want to question nor search too deeply as to why God was displeased with [Esau] before he was,” refusing to scrutinize the terms of reprobation or to wonder “why” or “when” God hated Esau.45 Heinsius thus eschews “all obscure and unnecessary questions” [alle duystere ende onnoodige questien], anticipating instruction in that “great school” in 38  Sellin [1968], 30–1; Acta Synodi Nationalis . . . [1620]. 39  The comment on “predestination” and tragedy appears in both the 1611 and the 1643 editions of De Tragoediae Constitutione; the “nunc” remained in the later version. See H1611, 212; PT, 119; DTC, 176. 40 Heinsius, In Theophania Sive Domini Natalem, Homilia [1613], 26; and [1618], 35. The English translation departs significantly from Heinsius’ Latin. 41 Heinsius, In Theophania Sive Domini Natalem, Homilia [1613], 26–7. 42 Heinsius, In Cruentum Christi Sacrificium, Sive Domini Passionem, Homilia [1613]. For an illuminating treatment of Heinsius’ poetry on Christ see Shuger [1994], 91–104. 43  Heinsius [1657], 434, 433. 44  Heinsius [1965], 302–4 [ll. 688–94]: “Ons hert en ons gemoet maeckt aen den hemel vast,/ Met eenen stercken bant, met kabels ende touwen/ Van rechte sekerheyt, van een volmaeckt betrouwen . . . Toomt onsen sotten waen, toomt de genegentheden,/ Om niet te nemen aen dan dat bestaet in reden.” 45  Heinsius [1965], 304 [ll. 701–3]: “Wy laten Esau staen, en willen niet bevragen/ Noch al te diep insien, waerom dat God mishagen/ In hem hadd’ eer hy was.”

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Paradise where Christ “will explain the Father’s deep intention and reveal your wisdom.”46 In the meantime, he readily accepts [aannemen] that God gave Jacob a “strong faith” [sterck geloof ] and “set him apart” [sonderd’ hem daer af ].47 God does not “recognize Jacob’s virtue” [siend’ op Iacobs deucht] and reward him accordingly. On the contrary, election is given, even before God laid the foundations of the world. And on this Heinsius is clear: Those who want to inquire further, they must remain below, doing nothing all day but fighting and arguing, unraveling [God’s] wisdom, and endlessly seeking after what will not be revealed to them or any others. Thus the fire is stoked, and rest and sweet peace are driven from us; thus do love and humility surely leave us. We set our step above in heaven and climb without a ladder, forgetting God the Son while walking towards the Father, losing our compass; the closer we come, the farther we are. Abandoning the ratio of God and his Word, drowning in the sea. Just as Bellerophon, reproaching the horses who walked on the land, proceeded to fly from the earth and gave Pegasus the spur; just as Phaëthon proceeded to the heavens on the chariot of the sun.48

As in De Tragoediae Constitutione, Heinsius warns readers to abjure speculative questions concerning election and reprobation, questions that lead inevitably to twisten ende kijjven—that is, to “fighting and arguing.” And here in the Lof-Sanck van Iesus Christus, as in the ideal tragedies he imagines in De Tragoediae Constitutione, he avoids technical theological language entirely. “Predestination” and its attendant terms do not appear in the poem; it is only in the critical notes that Heinsius’ colleague Petrus Scriverius uses terms like “predestination” [Praedestinatie], “election” [Verkiesinge], “reprobation” [Verworpinge], or even “providence” [voorzienigheid] to explain the poetry.49

46  Heinsius [1965], 304, 306 [ll. 707–32 and Petrus Scriverius’ 1616 note to “Wy laten Esau staen”]: “Dat is de groote school, daer ghy sult in verklaren/ Des Vaders diepen sin, uw’ wijsheyt openbaren.” 47  Heinsius [1965], 306 [ll. 713–16]. 48  Heinsius [1965], 306–8 [ll. 717–32]: Die verder willen gaen, die moeten onder blijven, Niet doende gants den dach dan twisten ende kijven, Doorgronden uwen raet, en soecken sonder end’, Het gene dat noch haer, noch ander is bekent. Dus wort het vier gestoockt, dus wort van ons verdreven De rust, de soete paeys: dus gaet ons vast begeven De min, de nederheyt. wy setten onsen stap Tot boven in de locht, en klimmen sonder trap. Vergeten God den Soon, en loopen naer den Vader; Verliesen het compas, en hoe wy kommen nader, Hoe dat wy verder sijn. verlatende de ree Van God en van zijn woort, verdrincken in de zee: Gelijck Bellerophon, misprijsende de peerden Die liepen op het lant, ginck vliegen van der eerden, Gaf Pegasus de spoor: gelijck als Phaëthon Ginck sitten boven op de wagen van de Son. 49  Heinsius [1965], 304–5 [Petrus Scriverius’ 1616 notes to “Wy laten Esau staen” and “Waerom dat God mishagen In hem hadd’ eer hy was”].



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HEINSIUS’ PHILOSOPHICAL DEITY While Heinsius generally avoided discussing providence or predestination, he does obliquely address God’s government of mundane affairs in his 1609 study of De mundo, an ancient work that was often attributed to Aristotle and included in editions of his corpus. Many medieval and early modern readers, including some of Heinsius’ mentors and contemporaries, were eager to maintain the authenticity of De mundo. If Aristotelian theology was otherwise incommensurable with Christianity, De mundo offered a compatible vision of an “immovable” God that “moves and directs all things as and where he wishes.”50 As Jill Kraye demonstrates: The God of De mundo, who framed the world and was responsible for the preservation of everything in it, seemed much closer to Christian notions of divinity than the generally accepted interpretations of Aristotle’s God, who had not created the world, whose providence extended only to the moon and who did not concern himself with the fate of individuals.51

Indeed, De mundo featured an extended account of divine providence, its author confirming “the orderly arrangement of the universe, which is preserved by God and through God.”52 Heinsius, however, effectively demonstrated that Aristotle was not the author of De mundo, using philological evidence to prove that it belonged to an unknown eclectic philosopher who lived under Roman rule, under either Augustus or a later emperor.53 He also marshaled his thorough knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy to show how the theological theses in De mundo conflicted with Aristotle’s claims across his corpus, particularly in the Metaphysics. The God of De mundo, Heinsius surmised, was not Aristotle’s philosophical god. Heinsius undoubtedly turned to De mundo not only because of his mounting interest in Greek philosophy but also because of its theological import in contemporary debates concerning providence and predestination. No less an authority than Gomarus invoked De mundo in his 1597 Conciliatio Doctrinae Orthodoxae Providentia Dei [A Harmony of Orthodox Doctrine with Divine Providence], a work that reappeared in print in both Latin and Dutch in 1613, in the midst of the Arminian Controversy. Gomarus attributed De mundo to Aristotle—the Philosopher who, he claimed, understood “by the light of nature” that a provident God directs all things: as the helmsman in his ship, as the charioteer in his chariot, as the leader in a chorus, as the lawgiver in a city, as the commander in a military camp . . . except that their command is wearisome and fraught with many movements and cares, while God rules without pain and toil, free from all bodily weakness.54 50  Aristotle [1955], 402–3. 51  Kraye [1990], 342; see also Kraye [1988], 175. 52  Aristotle [1955], 346–7. 53  Kraye [1988], 187–8. 54  Gomarus quotes De mundo at length here. Gomarus [1644], 165; [1613], 34; and Aristotle [1955], 402–3.

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Gomarus acknowledged that Aristotelian philosophy at large is incommensurable with Christianity, and dwelt on the differences between divine providence and the cosmos of De mundo, “an ornate and lifeless structure” [compagem ornatissimam & inanimem] distinct from the “living universe” [mundum . . . animantem] created and preserved “by God the Father, through the Son and the Holy Spirit.”55 Nevertheless, De mundo proved particularly useful to Gomarus as a model of accommodation, as a work that is undeniably limited but which nevertheless contains a kernel of truth. It is in this sense that Gomarus turned to De mundo to illustrate, simultaneously, the scope of God’s decree and the limits of human understanding. Arguing that God’s decree is eternal and unconditional, Gomarus maintained that there is no internal distinction between the creation of the world and the salvation of mankind, that these are the same in and for God. Both are determined by God’s will and executed by his immutable decree; neither are contingent on human will or dependent on human action. Because God’s decree far exceeds human comprehension, however, theologians and philosophers draw distinctions, provisional and heuristic, between God the Creator and God the Redeemer or between God’s general and special activity in nature. In his treatment of providence, Gomarus foregrounds God’s “conservation of the order of nature” [conservatio ordinis naturae], relegating discussions of God’s particular interventions to the margins; he emphasizes, overwhelmingly, God’s immutable decree “of creating or constitution, of governing or the constitution of the universe” [vel creationis seu constitutionis mundi, vel gubernationis & mundi constituti].56 Thus the Christian deity that emerges in Gomarus’ scholastic account of providence and predestination is remarkably impersonal, even as he points to the harmony between doctrine and Scripture. That is to say, Gomarus focuses far less on miracles or God’s special activity than on the constitution of the universe and the conservation of nature, informing his Contra-Remonstrant theses on necessity and salvation. While Gomarus certainly recognizes God’s extraordinary government of nature and affirms that “there is something beyond the ordinary order” [praeter commune ordinem existit], he nevertheless insists that such extraordinary phenomena still follow necessarily from God’s eternal decree.57 This preoccupation with a stable, created universe subtends his later treatments of contingency, necessity, and sin. Employing a detailed and precise language of causality, he demonstrates the necessity of God’s providence as well as its eternity. When he turns to salvation and damnation, moreover, incorporating evidence from theological works like Jean Calvin’s foundational treatise De Aeterna Dei Praedestinatione (1552), Gomarus sidelines discussions of Christ and faith, foregrounding a detailed language of causality and necessity.58 Christ rarely appears in the work. Instead, Gomarus attends to necessity and nature, emphasizing God’s immutable decree and its execution, by ordinary and extraordinary means, in creation and salvation. He is outraged by the sentiment he attributes to Euripides, that “Magnas res Deum curare, 55  Gomarus [1644], 164; [1613], 30. 56  Gomarus [1644], 166; [1613], 38. 57  Gomarus [1644], 167, 168; [1613], 44, 45. 58  Gomarus [1644], 170–5; [1613], 57–77.



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parvas fortunae committere”—that is, “God cares for great things but commits small things to fortune.”59 De mundo itself makes clear, albeit in accommodated terms, that as “the preserver of all things and the creator of everything in this cosmos” God “controls even things that seem a great way off” by means of his “indefatigable power.”60 God exercises this power in matters great and small, by ordinary and extraordinary means, consigning nothing to fortune. Gomarus’ God is thus intelligible across nature in various degrees of causality. This impersonal deity is manifest in nature, the “most lucid theater [theatrum . . . illustrissimum] of the infinite wisdom, benevolence, and power of God.”61 De mundo and Scripture alike accommodate this God and his decree to our human understanding. But Gomarus is most interested in the unaccommodated God that gives consistency to nature and human being. This Contra-Remonstrant vision of deity informs Heinsius’ critical work, from the In Librum de Mundo to De Tragoediae Constitutione, even as he methodically avoids direct references to divine providence or predestination. His 1609 oration is in one sense a reverent meditation on the limits of human knowledge and the ephemerality of human life, inflecting his interests in Stoicism and Neoplatonism.62 Across the brief oration Heinsius gives voice to a stoic Christianity that he later revisits in his didactic poem De Contemptu Mortis (1621): “Whomever understands correctly, who has already withdrawn such a large part of himself from the earth,” he claims, “will never fear death, will never lose himself entirely in these tribulations.”63 To a degree, Heinsius recognizes and even celebrates the ambition of De mundo, a testament to our human capacity for knowledge. The mind, after all, “had been fastened to such great things” [tam magnis destinata rebus fuerat] in its creation; using the word “destinata,” Heinsius implies not only that the human mind had been formed to contemplate the universe in its complexity, but also fixed, destined, even elected, to such noble ends.64 Although human beings are “entirely confined to this theater” [undique includantur hoc theatro]—that is, the mundane theater of nature—Heinsius nevertheless admires [admirari . . . lubet] how our fugitive minds are able to escape their limits [fugitivi elabuntur] and contemplate the sublime.65 But the oration has another, more pressing aim—namely, to castigate the speculative theology of De mundo in order to invest scholarship with focus and purpose. 59  Gomarus attributes this quote to “Euripides in Plutarc. Pericle,” but I have not found this reference. Gomarus [1644], 167; [1613], 42. 60  Aristotle [1955], 384–5. 61  Gomarus [1644], 175; [1613], 77. 62  Before he marshals philological and historical evidence to prove that Aristotle did not write De mundo, for instance, Heinsius implores his audience to show piety and perspective, tellingly reproducing a description of human transience from Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura: “O vanas hominum curas! O pectora caeca!/ Qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis/ degitur hoc aevi quodcunque est!”—that is, “O vain cares of men, O blind intelligences! In what gloom of life, in how great perils is passed all your poor span of time!” The modern Loeb edition reads “o miseras hominum mentes” instead of “O vanas hominum curas”; I alter the Rouse/Smith translation to reflect Heinsius’ version. DM, 78; and Lucretius [1924], 94–5. 63  DM, 78: “Hoc qui recte intelligit, numquam mortem timebit, numquam in angustias has totum se dabit, qui tam magna sui parte terram iam excessit.” 64  DM, 75. 65  DM, 75.

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Heinsius maintains that the author of De mundo is too invested in abstract theology to address more important matters concerning nature and human being. “If you read [De mundo] carefully,” he asserts: you will not so much note the knowledge of human affairs, which it describes by method, as you will become acquainted with contempt. For after we consider that which is clearly depicted to great measure and to many ends—namely, heaven and those fiery circles, not one of which generally exists which does not surpass earth in its other part; and God the creator, who prevails upon these, causes them to move and preserves them—we will discover an inhabited orb [that is, our own world] in a certain narrow corner of this universe which he mentions briefly while doing something else. He is clearly shameful who, raising his eyes to heaven, is still able to ponder such unimportant things even after comprehending immense things to such a degree.66

The author of De mundo tours the cosmos, describing the stars, planetary bodies, the aether, and the elements, emphasizing God’s preservation of all things—that is, God’s providence—in universal terms. When he does touch briefly (Heinsius’ “percurrit”) upon our inhabited world, however, the author devotes minimal attention to human affairs. He treats the earth, Heinsius claims, as one “site” among others. Even if the account of God’s providence and the picture of the universe are generally accurate in De mundo, the author nevertheless foregrounds unimportant matters, eschewing any detailed consideration of human life or its ends. For Heinsius, this is contemptible. Heinsius levies this critique against the author of De mundo, who comprehends [intellexit] the universe but who is nevertheless unable to reflect on its import among human beings. While its author affirms that “Necessity (᾽Ανάγκη) is nothing but another name for” God, we learn little about human agency, to say nothing of piety.67 In this sense Heinsius’ censure extends beyond De mundo to include the speculative theologies of the Arminian Controversy. He rebukes Gomarus, albeit indirectly, as he investigates God’s decree concerning creation and salvation with academic precision but offers little guidance to the people who comprise Church and Republic.68 De mundo emerges here as an uncontroversial example of 66  Although Heinsius implies otherwise here, the God of De mundo is not necessarily, strictly speaking, an “autorem Deum.” See Aristotle [1955], 346–9, 384–5, 394–5; and DM, 78–9: Tabulam Socraticae illi similem videtis, quam si diligenter evolveritis, non tam rerum humanarum scientiam quas ordine describit quam contemptum discetis. Postquam enim coelum igneosque illos orbes, quorum nullus fere est qui non terram parte sui altera excedat, & autorem Deum, qui haec flectit voluit & conservat, luculenter admodum & multis depictum videbitis, in angusto quodam universi huius Angulo, orbem habitabilem invenietis, cuius situm aliud agendo leviter percurrit. Qui tam parva semper cogitare potest postquam tam immensa intellexit, plane est indignus qui in coelum umquam oculos attollat. 67  Aristotle [1955], 406–7. 68  Heinsius, who contributed prefatory poems to many of Gomarus’ works, remained friends with the theologian until his death in 1641. Nevertheless, his censure of De mundo is consistent with his homilies and devotional poems composed during the tenure of the Controversy, all of which foreground Christ’s mediation and its meaning for Christian ethics. The impersonal God of De mundo and Gomarus’ theses on providence and predestination is alienating. Christ, Heinsius argues in his poems and homilies across the decade, is never remote from faith and devotional practice. See van Itterzon [1929], 373.



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misguided theology, ambitious and rigorous but no less shameful in its reticence to consider more mundane notions of providence or piety. Barring their clear differences, the Gods of De mundo and the Conciliatio Doctrinae Orthodoxae Providentia Dei both direct and preserve nature; their respective authors, however, give no meaningful indication of what this providence looks or feels like in quotidian milieux. God’s necessity is alien and foreboding. This alienation sets Heinsius’ critical project in De Tragoediae Constitutione to work, licensing his effort to transport the study of necessity in human affairs from theology to tragedy. Heinsius generally accepts the Contra-Remonstrant vision of deity, which grounds his investigations of nature and agency in De Tragoediae Constitutione. He seems to share Gomarus’ preoccupation with God’s immutable decree and the conservation of nature, but approaches necessity from the perspective of human being rather than divine providence. Thus in his treatment of tragic plot Heinsius affirms that “little exists that cannot be known by man” [pauca sunt quae sciri ab homine non possint], a confident endorsement of human knowledge as well as humans’ capacity to understand the world, even in its complexity.69 This is perhaps what one would expect of a Leiden intellectual—specifically, in 1611, the Professor Extraordinarius of Greek and, after 1613, the chair of Politics and History. In his same treatment of tragic plot, however, Heinsius admits that, “Sometimes in fact things are going to happen, or have happened, that cannot be known to man” [Nonnunquam enim eventura sunt vel evenere, quae ab homine cognosci non possunt].70 He thus preserves the mystery he ascribes to salvation in his theological work. But between God’s conservation of nature and matters pertaining to predestination— that is, between what can be known and what is fundamentally unknowable— Heinsius introduces a more meaningful distinction between things which are and are not necessary to know. Again, Heinsius maintains God’s mystery and relegates crucial matters pertaining to salvation to theology, without apology. Yet in privileging more mundane distinctions, Heinsius challenges readers to consider whether and how God’s decree is directly pertinent to human understanding. He eschews “theological” questions in favor of mundane demonstrations of probability and necessity in nature. And what makes Heinsius’ contribution noteworthy is the degree to which criticism and not theology attends to this distinction, between things that are or are not necessary to know. De Tragoediae Constitutione inaugurates a critical practice that distinguishes the former from the latter in tragedy and nature. This strategy hinges, first, on Heinsius’ insistence that the Poetics is a philosophical work, and tragedy a philosophical form. TRAGEDY AS PHILOSOPHY The importance and originality of De Tragoediae Constitutione lie in its philosophical purview. More than any previous early modern commentator, Heinsius locates the Poetics within Aristotle’s larger philosophical project, illustrating how the work of 69  PT, 68; DTC, 105–6.

70  PT, 68; DTC, 105.

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criticism—identifying “faults” [vitia] and “merits” [virtutes] in poetry and poetic practice, the task of the “precise critic” [Criticus accuratus]—relates directly to true philosophy, as the philosopher simultaneously confirms and perfects critical judgment [judicium] with reason [ratio], collating disparate critical claims “to construct a single art.”71 Maintaining its distinctions from rhetoric and grammar, Heinsius argues that poetry and poetics exceed “those restrictions of philosophy that grammarians prescribe,” noting instead that “the best tragic poets antedated these precepts.”72 With reference to the larger Aristotelian corpus, to the Metaphysics as well as the Politics and the Rhetoric, and to Plato, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Erasmus, Heinsius generally presents the Poetics as a philosophical work and tragedy as a philosophical mode of poetry.73 Heinsius emphasizes this philosophical province of tragedy across De Tragoediae Constitutione. While the capable tragedian employs eloquence and “civil knowledge” [prudentia civilis], demonstrating expertise in both rhetoric and politics, tragedy does not belong to either art; on the contrary, the best tragedies involve philosophical investigations of action and causality, attending to crucial notions of necessity, verisimilitude, credibility, and probability in plot as well as mos and thought.74 In this sense, Averroës’ Middle Commentary on the Poetics remains salient to De Tragoediae Constitutione, even though Heinsius does not cite the medieval text directly. Like Averroës and his Latin translators, Heinsius foregrounds the foundational connection between philosophy and tragedy. Marginalizing the dramatic apparatus or spectaculum, he illustrates how tragedy is related to rhetoric but nevertheless uses different resources, more akin to apodeictic and dialectic reasoning.75 Tragedy, in other words, is less a persuasive art or theatrical enterprise than it is a pointed treatment of probability and necessity, Aristotle’s Greek τό εἰκός and ἡ ἀνάγκη. De Tragoediae Constitutione remains within this tradition and Heinsius, more than any other early modern commentator, readily underscores both Aristotle’s philosophical treatment of tragedy and its relevance beyond the Poetics. Heinsius devotes most of De Tragoediae Constitutione to plot—that is, to μῦθος, fabula, or the rerum constitutio [σύνθεσις τῶν πραγμάτων] of the title—insisting that plot is “certainly and without controversy the principal and proper work of tragedy and, as Aristotle himself loves to say, the soul of tragedy.”76 After discussing both imitatio [μίμησις] and purgatio affectus [κάθαρσις] in Chapter II, Heinsius dedicates eleven consecutive chapters of De Tragoediae Constitutione to plot, its aspects and varieties. And as Heinsius first turns to plot at the outset of Chapter III, he is more Aristotelian than the Aristotle of the Poetics, introducing distinctions between form and matter (absent in the Poetics itself ) to distinguish between the essential and non-essential parts of tragedy.77 Like Aristotle, Heinsius identifies six component parts, but he claims that only four—plot [fabula], manners [mores], thought [sententia], and diction [dictio]—are essential to tragedy. The remaining 71  PT, 7; DTC, 3. 72  Wels [2013], 325–46; PT, 7; DTC, 2. 73  PT, xvi–xvii. 74  PT, 8; DTC, 4. 75  AV, 43, 49; Averroës [1962], 218r, 220v. 76  PT, 22; DTC, 26. 77  In the Poetics, Aristotle organizes the six component parts of tragedy into three categories: the media, mode, and objects of mimesis. See AP, 48–51 [1450a.5–15].



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two—spectacle [apparatus] and measure [modulatio]—only serve or support the essential parts.78 On these grounds, Heinsius demonstrates that plot, the proper structure of the action, is the most important part of tragedy. Thus the defining characteristic of a tragedy—really, what makes a tragedy a tragedy—is, foremost, the plot, the arrangement, the “rerum constitutio,” the organization of things.79 This seems, at first, very vague. But what is at stake for Heinsius, as for Aristotle, is that tragedy depicts the universal as an arrangement of actions that are bound together by necessity or verisimilitude (“verisimilitudo,” by which Heinsius generally means “probability”). As a tragedy unfolds, the actions are to be arranged in such a way as to emphasize what must or will most likely happen, based on universal notions and precise treatments of cause and effect. Heinsius makes this clear in underscoring Aristotle’s distinction between tragedy and history: “the task of the poet is much more serious than that of the historian because the one represents things that exist [the historian]; the other [the poet] represents not things that exist, but as they exist.”80 Thus tragedy, “unlike painting, is an imitation not of men but of actions and human life” [quod non ut pictura, hominum, sed actionum et humanae vitae imitatio est Traegoedia]; it does not render singular or individual men [nec personas modo singulas], “but men insofar as they act.”81 A tragic plot reveals little about particular men or particular passions, as a portrait might capture some aspects of individual men or events. Instead, a tragic plot illustrates how actions relate to one another, by cause and effect, universally—that is to say, by necessity or probability (which Heinsius calls both verisimilitudo and probabilitas)— as well as the conditions by which men relate to one another, as men. Thus the subject of a tragedy is a single, complete [absoluta] action, and the intrigue or interest often lies in how seemingly diverse actions and affects are unified or inextricable.82 A tragedy is an imitation of “a serious and grave action” [verum seriam actionem & gravem], not the “joyful or gay action of Comedy” [laetam ut Comoedia ac jucundam], and the affects proper to it are “pity and horror” [Misericordia, & Horror].83 Even here, however, Heinsius insists that tragic action is not only serious and grave but also single and “complete” [absolutam], “neither disconnected nor incomplete” [non abruptam neque semiplenam].84 Tragedy should move horror and pity, but the katharsis hinges on “a probable and correct imitation of actions” [probabili & recta actionum imitatione].85 Tragedy is thus defined by the way that it renders the 78  PT, 19; DTC, 21. 79  PT, 19–20; DTC, 21–2. 80  PT, 20; DTC, 22. 81 PT, 20; DTC, 22. Heinsius marshals Aristotle’s treatment of tragedy against the Horatian ­formula ut pictura poesis, challenging his popular comparative artistic maxim, so crucial to early modern aesthetic theory. Tragedy is not representative of individual elements or actions in the way a painting is, nor is it merely mimetic, although imitation is certainly a part of tragedy (and poetry in general). 82  PT, 11; DTC, 9–10. 83  While there is no sustained treatment of comedy in De Tragoediae Constitutione, Heinsius suggests that tragedy and comedy are similar, formally and historically, insofar as they are both imitations of a single action. Indeed, he claims that Old Comedy perfected tragic attention to plot and verisimilitude, having “devised its whole action not from truth but from verisimilitude and propriety” [non ex vero, sed ex verisimili & aequo actionem effinxisset totam]. Thus what distinguishes tragedy from comedy is not plot but the appropriate affects and effects. PT, 14, 11, 31; DTC, 18, 10, 45–6. 84  PT, 14; DTC, 18. Heinsius implies that these conditions hold for comedy as well. 85  PT, 47; DTC, 71.

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general or universal conditions of actions, the terms that govern every particular act or relationship. In retrieving this precise Aristotelian definition of tragedy, Heinsius endows poetry with a more comprehensive philosophical and ethical approach to human action than that afforded by contemporary poets and historians. Tragedy, as poetry but irreducible to verse, meter, histrionic performance, or apparatus, attends to structural phenomena in a way that enables the reader, auditor, or participant to discern larger, natural—even universal—patterns and truths. Heinsius compares plot in tragedy to reason in man; plot is tragedy’s “principal differentia” from other varieties of poetry, just as “to be endowed with reason” [ratione esse praeditum] differentiates man from all other animals.86 It is the constitutio, the overarching structure or unity, “complete, as is proper” [absoluta, ut oportet], which takes precedence in the work.87 A proper tragedy does not immerse the viewer or participant in a world of disconnected or random events. On the contrary, the attention is placed on the arrangement or arc of the action that in turn draws the auditor or participant to a greater appreciation for the unity of events, to cause and effect across the work. Mere dramaturgy is not enough; attention to character development, eloquent speech, or individual motivations may make a tragedy finer, but they do not constitute tragedy in any essential way. On this Heinsius is clear: Anyone who employs the kind of discourse in tragedy that both copies manners aright and decks itself in the finest words and thoughts . . . exquisitely fashioned according to the rule of art, will least attain to what is proper to the tragic poet. If, on the contrary, he takes no great account of either manners, diction, or thought, if he arranges the action carefully and with requisite artistry, if he structures the incidents, if he knits together and finishes the fable as he ought, he will accomplish the task of the tragic poet.88

Tragedy attends to the arrangements and unity of action; exemplary tragedy does this while, at the same time, observing the rule of art [praescripto artis] that prescribes eloquence, diction, and form. But the key element is, unreservedly, the constitutio of tragedy, the attention to totality that facilitates the study of species or types [genera/species] as opposed to particulars [singuli/individui], the feature which makes the office of tragedian magis . . . philosophicum et operosum—that is, “more philosophical and exacting”—than other poetic or intellectual offices.89 It is neither meter nor spectacle that makes a tragedy, but rather the “method or reason of its imitation and its organization” [verum imitatio, eiusque ac dispositionis ratio].90 Heinsius’ claims concerning the “nobility” of tragedy refer directly to its ­philosophical purchase: To the degree that genus and species are nobler [nobiliora] than particulars (one can have no knowledge of the latter, since they are infinite; precise knowledge of the former is possible), the office of the tragic poet is nobler than that of the historian . . . Aristotle also tells us elsewhere and not just once, that when ancient philosophers saw that 86  PT, 21–2; DTC, 26–7. 89  PT, 29–31; DTC, 38, 40–2.

87  PT, 21–2; DTC, 26–7. 90  PT, 29; DTC, 39.

88  PT, 21; DTC, 25.



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particulars are infinite and perpetually suffer either corruption or generation, and when they felt that knowledge could properly handle lasting things that only and ever stay the same, they turned their attention from particulars to universals. And therefore a philosopher considers man generically, not individual men (e.g. some one individual from the multitude, an Alcibiades or a Socrates); not dogs, but dog; not horses, but horse: that is, the very species of man, of dog, of horse. The same must be said of the poet.91

A proper tragedy, for Heinsius as for Aristotle, emphasizes generic or universal phenomena as well as the unity of action, where “An action does not become one from all kinds of disconnected actions, since an action becomes one only from actions so inter-related that if one of them is posited, another follows out of either necessity or verisimilitude [aut necessario aut vero similiter sequatur].”92 We are drawn to consider either necessity or probability as well as the universality of events in a philosophical way. Even if the tragedy is obviously contrived, a work of fiction, it must have verisimilitude. Oedipus may not have existed, but in Sophocles’ tragedies he is subject to cause and effect, to probability and necessity, like any natural man; the success of the tragedy hinges on Sophocles’ imitation of nature, depicting an action convincingly and consistently. In other words, whether or not the action of a tragedy is historical, whether the poet feigns the plot or adapts a pre-existing plot, the events must still unfold according to necessity or probability, depicting relations of cause and effect that are universal. Verisimilitude is based on truth, and a true action is generally verisimilar as well—that is to say, just as tragedies proceed according to necessity or probability, so too do natural processes. As tragedy imitates nature, it lays bare the order of nature, demonstrating its conditions and limits. In tragedy, we learn how nature itself works. Nevertheless, Heinsius claims, in both tragedy and nature events are prone to occur which defy nature and logic but which are nevertheless true—things “miraculous” or “prodigious” or “beyond the order of nature, for whatever reason,” confounding expectations concerning what is possible or probable.93 In this sense, it would be admissible to compose a tragedy based on true events that nevertheless defy necessity and the order of nature. Christ’s miraculous incarnation, for instance, is prodigious, entirely alien to nature, but it is nonetheless true and probable (even necessary) to Christian audiences. A tragedy on this subject might depict the matter credibly, as a verisimilar presentation of the incarnation based on history and Scripture. In this sense, Christian tragedy is certainly possible, and De Tragoediae Constitutione is not a work of secular criticism. But such a tragedy would also illustrate how the matter—in this case, the incarnation—is particular to Christ and, even as an expression of God’s will, alters the natural order of necessary cause and effect, introducing miracle or mystery into an otherwise rational aetiology. Christ’s humanity is fundamentally different than natural humanity. Thus, while he does 91  PT, 31; DTC, 42–3. 92  PT, 26; DTC, 36. 93  In a brilliant if not entirely convincing reading of De Tragoediae Constitutione, Mark Somos argues that Heinsius, preoccupied with verisimilitude, is categorically critical of tragedies that include prodigies and miracles. In this sense, Somos reads De Tragoediae Constitutione as a secularizing work, even one that invalidates Christian tragedy. PT, 32; DTC, 45; and Somos [2011], 108–17, 124–6.

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not discount the possibility of Christian tragedy, Heinsius does not offer a single example of a tragedy based on a New Testament fabula, imitating a “Christian action.” He calls Baptistes, in which Buchanan recounts John the Baptist’s evangelical career, a “sad comedy” [Tristis enim Comeodia] which the author himself admits “unwittingly [ignarus] when he prefixes a Terentian prologue”; he refers only obliquely to “the best two writers in the patristic age” who “defiled tragedy” [Tragoediam . . . inquinarunt], neither of whom are identified.94 Miracles in nature are rare. Instead, Heinsius draws upon antique tragedy, in Greek and Latin, as well as more recent tragedies based on Old Testament fabulae. He discusses the events in II Samuel 13, for instance, both true and verisimilar: David’s son Amnon lusts after his sister Tamar and rapes her, after which the dishonored Tamar is devastated and both David and Absalom distraught at her fate—the plot of the Thamara by Rochus Honerdus, to whom De Tragoediae Constitutione is addressed. The action of the plot—and, in particular, Tamar’s shame and injury—“is no less verisimilar than true”; even if the Scriptural events had not happened, “it would still seem true for this very reason.”95 Scripture thus shares criteria for verisimilitude with those profane tragedies populated by mythical figures that nevertheless treat incest and its effects with no less attention to nature and probability. In collating truth and verisimilitude, Heinsius points to the philosophical relationship between necessity and probability, reminding readers of what Aristotle “said in the First Book of the Rhetoric, though in a slightly different connection, [that] recognizing the true [verum] involves the same faculty as recognizing the verisimilar [verisimile], just as dealing with the true seems to involve the same faculty as dealing with the verisimilar.”96 A tragedy need not depict “true” events—that is, particular events that have happened—but should depict events that are credible and probable, events that must or could or do happen, drawing our attention to generic or universal phenomena in nature. The philosophical stakes are high for the tragedian, for whom tragedy is a study of action and cause, necessity and verisimilitude. In attending to the Poetics as a work of philosophy, “he comes to understand causes and by calculation [ratione] executes what others effect by chance or experience [quae forte alii efficient aut usu], not simply to keep the path but also to have a shortcut.”97 Attention to plot affords such a shortcut, a precise treatment of cause and effect that supplements logic or dialectic. This philosophical precision extends from plot to manners or mores—Aristotle’s ἦθος, the second essential part of tragedy—in De Tragoediae Constitutione. Manners or mores are distinct from “characters”; they are in fact constitutive of character or persona in tragedy. As with plot, tragic mores express some general or universal aspect of human life and behavior. In tragedy, Heinsius argues, “we understand someone’s intention or inclination [institutum alicuius . . . aut voluntatem] not through the declaration of the speaker, but from the very property of manners that 94  Sellin tentatively suggests that Heinsius refers to Gregory of Nazianzen and John of Damascus. PT, 136, 116, 137; DTC, 209, 170. 95  PT, 32; DTC, 45–6. Heinsius compares Honerdus’ Thamara to antique tragedy in his dedicatory poem, in Honerdus [1611], (∴)7v–(∴)8r. 96  PT, 32; DTC, 45. 97  PT, 7; DTC, 3.



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shines through in it [in hac elucet proprietate morum].”98 Heinsius insists that the speeches attributed to distinct personae should express their mores clearly. Aristotle and Heinsius alike imagine an impersonal drama here, where tyrants speak like tyrants in tragedy, laying bare tyrannical ambitions and inclinations; lovers speak like lovers, elderly men like elders, etc. Heinsius’ interpretation of the Poetics rests here on the assumption that speech [sermo] “is part of nature itself insofar as it re­presents mores according to propriety [ex decoro] and thus affects the innermost senses.”99 Among the Greeks, he claims, Sophocles best realizes this correspondence between speech and mos, so crucial to tragedy. Among the Latins, Heinsius praises Terence above any and every tragedian for his ability to observe decorum in speech. With few exceptions, he avers, Latin tragedies “reek of vanity and the squalor of rhetoricians and have certainly corrupted the speech based on mores,” crucial to tragic precision; “the frequency of subtleties [acuminum],” he claims, “robbed much from the mores”—that is, we learn less about distinct personae, their inclinations and affects, when tragic poets abandon clarity for rhetorical flourish and excess.100 Thus tragic poets are encouraged to express mores clearly, appropriately, and naturally. And with respect to mores themselves, to the actions and affects attributed to the tragic personae, Heinsius urges poets to seek consistency. Before he suggests that tragedies should include “as many persons of the best moral character as the design permits” [ut quantum ratio permittit, plures optime morati], privileging the depiction of good over evil mores, Heinsius first underscores Plato’s claim that tragic imitation should not be “inconstant, irregular” [varia non uniformis].101 Mores should be similar [similis] and consistent [aequalis] as well as appropriate [conveniens], observing decorum; one should not assign the mores of a man to a woman, for instance, nor should a cruel persona suddenly behave otherwise, without reason.102 Seneca errs in the Thyestes, for instance, when he depicts the title character inconsistently, establishing his skepticism and contempt for the gods before presenting him as pious in a later episode. Even inconsistent personae must be depicted consistently as inconsistent—for “just as in organization of events, so also in mores what is consistent or necessary [aequum est aut necessarium] must be heeded, for anyone who, as they say, entertains clearcut discrepancies in himself is necessarily inconsistent.”103 The philosophical precepts governing tragic plot pertain directly to tragic mores and thus to speech and personae as well. Thought—sententia or διάνοια, the third essential part of tragedy in the Poetics— is also given philosophical precision in De Tragoediae Constitutione, as Heinsius distinguishes between kinds of thought before affirming that tragic personae should express thought appropriately and consistently. Like mores, thought is apparent in speech when personae demonstrate [demonstrare], refute [confutare], prove, or advise in matters “which pertain to our actions and are either to be 98  PT, 86–7; DTC, 130. 99  PT, 90; DTC, 137. 100  PT, 88, 90; DTC, 133, 137. 101  PT, 91, 90; DTC, 140, 138. 102  As Heinsius illustrates, Horace’s Ars Poetica is directly relevant here. PT, 90–3; DTC, 138–44. 103  PT, 93; DTC, 144.

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pursued or avoided.”104 Thought is often grounded in rhetoric, moving the affects [affectus excitare] or elevating [elevare] subjects to various purposes; in other cases, thought presents truth, either by commonplace or by enthymeme. In fact, Heinsius claims, “thought” generally consists of potent and familiar phrases, maxims, or arguments—commonplaces that are assigned to appropriate personae. As I illustrated in the Introduction, printed tragedies often identified commonplaces with quotation marks or notes, both in the margins and in the text itself. Some editions even included indices reproducing these commonplaces at the end, excerpted from the text; in his edition of Sophocles, for instance, Naogeorgus added a “Collection of Sententiae and Proverbial Sayings Gathered from Sophocles’ Tragedies” [Thesaurus Sententiarum Dictorumque Proverbialum, ex Sophoclis Tragoediis Excerptorum], making “thoughts” or “sententiae” readily available.105 Heinsius shares this definition of thought, and even works in the spirit of that “doctissimus paroemiographus” Erasmus, that “most learned adagist” who understood the connections between maxims and thought.106 Thought articulates something general, even universal, by presenting a self-evident truth or a pithy argument—not trite but clear and concise and enduring. In this sense, a particular person is “mentally stimulated and moved” [quin exultet animo & concitetur] when he “hears in general terms [in genere] what he himself has concluded in particular cases [in specie].”107 And just as speech must clearly and accurately reflect mores, so too must personae express thought appropriately and consistently. P L OT, S P E C TA C L E , A N D S TA G E M A C H I N E RY Where Heinsius exposes how these essential parts offer keen philosophical resources to poets and critics, the deleterious elements of spectacle and machinae threaten to blunt the precision of tragedy. Heinsius initially illustrates this where he repeats Aristotle’s critique of Aeschylus—Aeschylus, who relies too much on spectacle “to move portentous and prodigious wonder” [portentosam tantum & prodigiosam admirationem moveant], violating the dictum that the tragedy “must be so structured [constituendam] that without any artistry or assistance on the part of the actors, anyone should be sorely moved with pity and horror just upon reading it.”108 As tragedy expresses a unity of parts, “omitting or changing but a single one alters or distorts the whole too.”109 Moreover, universal or general events, mores, or thoughts are meaningful without recourse to performance. Spectacle—that is, ὄψις or apparatus, the element of performance which Heinsius considers inessential to tragedy—often upsets this artful arrangement insofar as it merely moves the spectators without any attention to the constitutio, to necessity, verisimilitude, or aetiology, all of which truly make a tragedy effective. Heinsius initially follows Castelvetro here but insofar as he eschews the notion that spectacle is essential to tragedy, he departs from Castelvetro’s rhetorical treatment of performance and 104  PT, 100; DTC, 149–50. 107  PT, 103; DTC, 154–5.

105  Sophocles [1558], 445. 108  PT, 46; DTC, 71, 70.

106  PT, 65; DTC, 100. 109  PT, 157; DTC, 333.



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accommodation. Instead Heinsius codifies Rainolds’ sharp distinctions between recitation and performance. Where tragedy is a poetic skill (literally, an ars), the tragedian who relies on the apparatus proper to spectacle is dependent on the skill of the actors, painters, and various craftsmen who are responsible for the trappings of the stage.110 This is no mere artistic quibble but rather a crucial note on the division of labor described in the Poetics. The poet composes a plot that should be efficacious on its own; another art entirely, spectacle often muddles the reality or verisimilitude of the plot, obscuring the relations that tragedy foregrounds, affecting audiences inappropriately. It is in this sense that spectacle also inhibits the function of tragedy, confusing the natural affective relations between human beings that ground Aristotelian purgation: “man pities man as man” [hominem enim hominis miseret ut hominis], which Aristotle called “the law of humanity [humanitatis legem], which approaches very close to true pity.”111 Tragic plot alone invokes these affects, particularly as Heinsius subtly includes mores, sententiae, and diction—the other essential elements of tragedy—among the “rerum” of “rerum constitutio,” insisting that plot is the most important element in tragedy. A successful or efficacious tragedy, then, depends on the poet alone, not on the skill of the actors, the shape of the spectacle, or the particular episodes or events depicted. Thus Heinsius draws a sharp distinction between the plot of a tragedy and its performance. The former is an essential part of tragedy, while the latter, involving spectacle, histrionic elements, and music, is not. Like Aristotle, Heinsius recognizes that tragedy is complete without spectacle and measure, that “no one who ever reads [legit] Sophocles or Euripides or Seneca requires them,” and that “written discourse [oratio scripta], without gesture and delivery [sine actione aut pronunciatione], is full and perfect discourse nonetheless.”112 Heinsius also marks a fundamental difference between rhetoric and poetry here, between the orator, who uses his own theatrical skills and resources when delivering a speech, and the tragic poet [tragicus], distinct from the tragic actor [tragoedus], who need not be concerned with aspects of performance that are ultimately alien to tragic poetry. In this sense, he suggests that rhetoric is a more histrionic and spectacular art than poetry, that the orator and the actor share investments in performance that are alien to tragic poetry. Heinsius makes a similar point in the preface to his Herodes Infanticida, albeit subtly, as he cites Plutarch to draw key distinctions between tragedy as poetry and tragedy in performance.113 There he reproduces a section of the Moralia, in Greek and Latin, where Plutarch recounts how “the Athenian people . . . have spent more on productions of Bacchae, Phoenissae, Oedipuses, and Antigones, and the woes of Medea and Electra, than they spent in fighting for their 110  Citing the traditional biography of Aeschylus, Heinsius even suggests that when tragedians privilege spectacle over plot, they obscure the primary affects [affectus or perturbationes] of tragedy and resort to inauthentic characters affecting seriousness [affectata personarum gravitate], ultimately threatening the sincerity and credibility of the work. PT, 46, 45; DTC, 71, 68–9. 111  PT, 53; DTC, 83. 112  PT, 149; DTC, 212. 113  When Heinsius translates Plutarch into Latin he employs “rectus” instead of “simplex,” and “involutus” instead of “implexa,” to describe simple and complex plots; he even seems to use “argumentum” instead of “fabula” for “plot.” But he does this often in De Tragoediae Constitutione as well. DTC, 26–7, 262; HI, A4r–A4v.

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supremacy and for their liberty against the barbarians,” illustrating how their preoccupation with tragedy was both luxurious and dangerous.114 But the substantial costs to which Plutarch refers pertain much more to performance than to poetry. To the letter, his is an indictment of the expensive apparatus, of the actors [ὑποκριταὶ] and the poets “speaking and chanting to the accompaniment of flutes and lyres,” with “their equipment [σκευὰς], their masks and altars, their stage machinery [μηχανὰς ἀπὸ σκηνῆς], their revolving changes of scene, and the tripods that commemorate their victories.”115 These mercenary figures are more akin to “painters and gilders and dyers of statues” than to poets.116 And Heinsius underscores this sentiment with another relevant quote from the Moralia, from Plutarch’s biography of the orator and statesman Lycurgus. Lycurgus is said to have reinstituted “the law that bronze statues of the poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides be erected, that their tragedies be written out and kept in a public depository”; in Harold North Fowler’s modern English translation of this passage, “the clerk of the State” regulates these texts, reading them “to the actors who were to perform their plays” as it was considered “unlawful to depart from the authorized text in acting [ὑποκρίνεσθαι].”117 Heinsius offers a more strict division between text and performance in his Latin translation of this same Greek passage, claiming that the tragedies should be “à civitatis scriba legerentur; cum histriones non admîtteret”— that is, tragedies should be “read by a scribe to the citizens, while actors might not be granted admittance” to the public facility where the texts are held.118 The distinction between tragic poetry and performance is clear here, supporting his focused treatment of tragedy in De Tragoediae Constitutione. Heinsius’ claims concerning the scope and magnitude of tragedy also follow from this philosophical reading of the Poetics. Where Aristotle argues that “tragedy tends so far as possible to stay within a single revolution of the sun, or close to it” [1449b.12–13], Heinsius relates this explicitly to plot and comprehension rather than performance.119 Thus the so-called “unity of time” is not an attempt to accommodate plot to the stage or theater but rather a way to render the totality of events comprising the plot intelligible as a totality. Aristotle suggests a time limit to enable the audience to consider the tragedy in its unity, as a “beautiful object . . . with a structure of parts” of a “length that can be coherently remembered” [1450b.33, 1451a.5].120 In both the Poetics and De Tragoediae Constitutione, philosophical criteria govern the terms of this single and complete action: “the size which permits a transformation to occur, in a probable or necessary [τὸ εἰκὸς ἢ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον] sequence of events from adversity to prosperity or prosperity to adversity, is a sufficient limit of magnitude” [1451a.11–15]—or, in Heinsius’ reading, “the action itself of tragedy must grow to that point at which of necessity it has to be ended.”121 Thus Aristotle’s suggestion concerning the scope of tragedy is particularly important to Heinsius, for whom the philosophical value of tragedy rests on the assumption 114  HI, A4v. Plutarch, “Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom?” [1936], 512–13. 115  Plutarch, “Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom?” [1936], 510–11. 116  Plutarch, “Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom?” [1936], 512–13. 117  Plutarch, “Lives of the Ten Orators” [1936], 398–401. 118  HI, A4v. 119  AP, 46–7. 120  AP, 54–7. 121  PT, 25; DTC, 33; AP, 56–7.



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that audiences are presented with a unity or totality of actions, affects, mores, and sententiae in a way that makes clear precisely how these constituent parts relate to one another as a whole. Events and affects that would otherwise seem random or unrelated are presented in a way that emphasizes their probability or necessity within a totality. We see again how tragedy, in an Aristotelian tradition, is more philosophical than history. Histories present us with a procession of contingent events that have happened while tragedies depict the causal relationships between and among events, actions, and affects, foregrounding general conditions by which things happen. For this to take effect, the action must be complete; the succession of events has to be credible or plausible in its entirety, laying bare a sequence of events as well as the logic by which these events and affects are united, as a total arrangement. It is in this logical or philosophical sense that Heinsius insists, after Aristotle, a tragedy is a depiction of a single action—“single” because its parts are “so inter-related [quae sic inter se cohaerent] that if one of them is posited, another follows out of either necessity or verisimilitude”—be that single action simple or complex.122 A simple [simplex] action is a “single and continuous” [continua ac una] action without recognition or peripeteia, in which “nothing is anticipated that does not happen” and “nothing new or surprising appears”; most plots are of this kind, and, as they are “most natural” [maxime . . . naturales], they involve “less art” [minus artis] than complex actions.123 Every extant simple tragedy is also “pathetic, and full of perturbations” [Pathetica, & perturbationum plena], like Sophocles’ Ajax or Seneca’s Hercules Furens, both of which feature “raging and madness [furor & insania], and from these the deaths of the hero.”124 Complex [Implexa seu non simplex] actions—and it should be said that Heinsius seems to use “action” and “fable” interchangeably here, in his treatment of complex actions—involve recognition and peripeteia, thus complicating the assumptions and expectations at the outset of the plot.125 The complex action, however, is still single and still proceeds by necessity or probability. In other words, even with the introduction of an unexpected or surprising element, the peripeteia which occasions the recognition, all of the parts of the plot are still intimately related. As Aristotle claims in Poetics 1452a.4–6, events take shape “contrary to expectation yet on account of one another,” which Heinsius translates “praeter expectationem alterum alterius est causa.”126 Thus Heinsius suggests that complex actions are also unified by necessity or verisimilitude—and, again, by “verisimilitude” he refers to what is possible or probable or realistic, according to nature. Everything in the tragedy serves the general or universal aspects of the plot. Neither the simple nor complex actions that define plots are episodic. As Aristotle claims in Poetics 1451b.33–6, in episodic plots “episodes follow one another without probability or necessity”—in Heinsius’ 122  PT, 21–2, 25. 123  PT, 34–5; DTC, 47–8. 124  Heinsius identifies two other species of simple plot, those that are “morata” or “expressive of manners of persons good or ill” and those that are “fabulosa” or “legendary,” but claims that there are no extant examples of these. PT, 62; DTC, 95. 125  PT, 34, 35–6; DTC, 47, 50–1. 126  DTC, 261; AP, 62–3.

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translation, “Episodia neque verosimiliter neque necessario inter se cohaerent.”127 Episodic plots proceed contingently and lack both the unity and the necessary or probable causality of tragic plots. Heinsius maintains the importance of unity of action as he attends to the dynamic shapes of complex plots, the “method of binding, or complication, and loosing, or denouement” [de solvendi ratione ac connectendi] which Aristotle articulates in the Poetics [1455b.23–7].128 The shift from complication to denouement takes place at the moment of peripeteia or reversal of fortune—in Heinsius’ Latin, the mutatio actionis.129 This dialectic between complication and denouement, between binding and loosing, gives form to the tragedy while retaining the unity or totality of the work. It is here that Heinsius introduces what is perhaps his most radical and philosophical comment on the Poetics as he explains solution or denouement, beginning with a quaint example before ending with a suggestive condemnation of miracles in tragedy: Just as it commonly happens that someone who ties a knot thereupon finds it difficult to untie the same and sometimes, conquered by the difficulty of the matter, is at length even forced to quit, so a poet often ties something together that is impossible either to untie, or do so correctly. For this problem, men found a much-used denouement which they called denouement by contrivance [Solutionem . . . è machina dixerunt]. This has no art to it whatsoever, and utterly conflicts with art. However, it is wont to be the dodge [effugium] of a poet when he is unable happily to untie what he imprudently knotted up. Hence, Plato [in the Cratylus] did very well in calling contrivance a sign of tragical despair [desperationis Tragicae indicium], for there is nothing that cannot be done by a god. This is why for the most part, he says, when poets have constructed inextricable actions, they tag on a miraculous ending [finem miraculosum], and of necessity are forced to seek from a god the denouement which they themselves are not able to bring about, since there is nothing that cannot be thus resolved.130

To support his critical judgment against machines or contrivances, “either with or without a God” [vel cum Deo, vel sine illo], Heinsius collates Aristotle’s comments on spectacle with his guidelines concerning solutions involving machines. In the Poetics, for instance, Aristotle clearly states that “the denouements of plots should issue from the plot as such, and not from a deus ex machina [μηχανῆς] as in Medea,” as such “irrational” [ἄλογον] elements should be excluded from the plot 127  Episodes that are “outside the plot” [praeter argumentum] are only licit and artful when “inserted into the plot for the sake of the plot.” PT, 35; DTC, 49, 260; AP, 62–3. 128  These terms are established in Heinsius’ Latin translation of the Poetics where he renders the beginning of Chapter XVII (according to Heinsius’ Ordo Aristotelis) as such: “Omnis autem Tragoediae duae sunt partes. quarem altera Co[n]nexio, altera Solutio”—that is, “There are two parts to every tragedy: on the one hand the binding, or complication and on the other hand the loosing, or denouement.” PT, 63, 161; DTC, 96, 275, 340–5; AP, 82–5; and Sellin [1974], 72–93. 129  It is significant that the exact Latin words describing the period from the peripeteia to the end of the tragedy are solutio and (Heinsius’ gerund) solvendi. Insofar as solvendi names the loosening, unbinding, releasing, and emancipating which gives shape to the work, it refers to the constitution or plot as well as to the purgation of affects so integral to the definition of tragedy, a common classical use being “to remove, relieve, soothe affections, passions.” DTC, 48. 130  PT, 63; DTC, 96–7.



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[1454b.1–7].131 Yet Heinsius also ties the machine or contrivance to the arts of spectacle, foreign to tragic poetry itself. When a tragic poet takes recourse to stage machinery—literally, to the device used to raise or lower the actor in the theater— they make use of a mechanical art, distinct from poetry. Under such duress the tragic poet literally draws, hauls, or even drags in the machine [Trahere machinam] in order to fix an inadequate plot.132 “Nothing is as common [or ordinary] as a device involving a god” [Machina cum Deo, nihil usitatius], Heinsius claims, as these deities frequently appear in tragedies ancient and modern.133 But this does not make dei ex machinis any more poetic or excusable. On the contrary, Heinsius cites the Cratylus where Socrates disparages thoughtless interlocutors who “follow the example of the tragic poets, who, when they are in a dilemma, have recourse to the introduction of gods on machines [μηχανὰς].”134 In this particular context, Socrates mocks those who eschew philosophical investigation of language and meaning, who claim instead that “the gods gave the earliest names”; by invoking the gods, they resort to “clever evasions” and subsequently “refuse to offer any rational theory of the correctness of the earliest names.”135 Plato calls this turn to divinity “irrational”; Heinsius calls it “tragic despair,” common but nonetheless generally vulgar and artless. A device or machina, whether or not it involves a god, violates the unity of tragic plot. For Heinsius, as for Aristotle, tragedy is more philosophical than history precisely because a tragedy depicts a single action, a totality, and subsequently enables the participant to understand how its parts are connected and related, not merely individually but universally, by probability or necessity. Tragedy, in its unity, affords the participant an adequate understanding of causality, where anything that takes shape in the tragedy can be explained by other elements in the same work. A tragedy is an object lesson in immanent causality, comprised of “actions so inter-related [quae sic inter se cohaerent] that if one of them is posited, another follows out of either necessity or verisimilitude.”136 Tragedy enables one to perceive causes and effects, agents, affects, and mores, as a totality. But the introduction of an external device or machine threatens this unity as well as any adequate understanding of necessary or probable causality. The philosophical import of this observation is most clear as Heinsius draws our attention to the First Book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Here Aristotle recounts how the philosopher Anaxagoras “attributed the order of the universe to the intellect . . . and he did so rightly, if one accounts for God.”137 Nevertheless, it is Aristotle, the philosopher “who permitted nothing without reason and even made nature the measure of divine things . . . [who] said that when Anaxagoras (as over against Plato and the ancients) could not escape, drags in his ‘Mind’ as though it were a contrivance [Mentem suam tanquam machinam attrahere] and so escapes”—hence Anaxagoras, like the common poet, introduces an element that is foreign to the totality of forces in an effort to make

131  AP, 80–3. 132  PT, 63; DTC, 97. 133  PT, 63; DTC, 97. 134  Plato [1926], 142–3. 135  Plato [1926], 142–3. 136  PT, 26; DTC, 36. 137  PT, 64; DTC, 99.

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sense of the same totality.138 This is explicit in the Metaphysics: “Anaxagoras uses reason as a deus ex machina for the making of the world, and when he is at a loss to tell for what cause something necessarily is, then he drags reason in, but in all other cases ascribes events to anything rather than to reason.”139 Like Plato in the Cratylus, Aristotle dismisses Anaxagoras as irrational, chiding, in this case, both his fantastic and unfounded solution and his inconsistency. Like an inept tragedian, Anaxagoras drags in a stage machine, an irrational and unsatisfying solution to a philosophical problem. This follows Heinsius’ treatment of spectacle in Chapter VIII of De Tragoediae Constitutione, whereby those incompetent poets who rely on  stagecraft and performance seek to evoke fear and pity but only manage to “move portentous and prodigious wonder”—a profound experience, indeed, but not properly tragic.140 The introduction of a device is equally confounding, and is generally to be avoided in tragedy as well as in philosophy. Heinsius’ Leiden colleague Vossius makes this point clear in his own Poeticae institutiones libri tres (1647), in a passage that recapitulates this central claim of De Tragoediae Constitutione—namely, that: in the dénouement of the plot one should not lightly take recourse to a flight by means of a stage artifice or the descent of a god in it from heaven. Because it is unpraiseworthy to tie a knot one is unable to untie, not even poets may introduce such confusion that they are unable to extricate themselves except by taking recourse to a god, for whom nothing is impossible, or by removing someone by means of a stage artifice; this smacks more of magical than legitimate art.141

The machine or deus ex machina is thus an easy, common, and generally artless way for a poet to resolve a plot, a magical or irrational solution to a problem of composition and causality. When Euripides or Plautus takes recourse to machines, Heinsius argues, this is not only the “cure for a badly constructed action” [actione male constitutae remedium], it also reveals how the plot “had been badly tied together by the poet” [male intricatum à poëta fuerit].142 Heinsius even presents the expression “Deum attollere, & ad machinam confugere”—that is, “To elevate the god, and flee to the machine”—as an adage, familiar to Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and Lucian, even if it escaped the notice of the “most learned adagist” Erasmus as he compiled successive editions of his Adagia.143 As an adage, the expression is not only essential to plot but to thought as well, a historical witness to Heinsius’ claims concerning tragedy and philosophy. Collating Aristotle’s comments on spectacle 138  PT, 64–5; DTC, 99–100. 139  Aristotle [1984], 1558 [985a.18–21]. Heinsius, in his Latin translation of this section of the Metaphysics, gives the noun “Mens” where Ross translates the Greek term as “reason.” See DTC, 100. 140  PT, 46–7; DTC, 71. 141  See Vossius [2010], 220–1. The Latin follows: “Nec temere in solutione fabulae recurrendum ad fugam per machinam, vel Dei in ea è coelis descensum. Nam cùm illaudabile sit nodum nectere, quem solvere non possis: ne in poëtis quidem probatur, si ejusmodi rerum perturbationem inducant, ut se expedire haud aliter possint, quàm vel ad Deum recurrendo; cui nihil [impossibile]: vel aliquem per machinam subducendo; quod ipsum magicae, non licitae est artis” [I.43]. 142  PT, 63–4; DTC, 97–8. 143  Cicero uses this language in De Natura Deorum, for instance, in his examination of creation and nature. PT, 64, 65; DTC, 98, 100–1; Cicero [1933], 52–3.



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and machinery, Heinsius illustrates how criticism and philosophy merge, how poetic failures also obscure causality and introduce irrational elements into an otherwise rational tragic milieu. T R A G E D Y N OT M Y S T E R I O U S Heinius puts these principles to work in his Herodes Infanticida, the tragedy which he initially composed as he developed the theses on criticism and philosophy in De Tragoediae Constitutione.144 No miraculous event orients the action in Herodes Infanticida. It is a tragic meditation on necessity and human interpretation, an investigation of nature and piety rather than a theological treatment of Christ or Christianity. Here Heinsius depicts the first martyrs described in Matthew 2:16—that is, the infants who were massacred when a frustrated Herod, anxious to eradicate the newborn Jesus, ordered soldiers to kill all of the children under two years of age in and around Bethlehem. In the gospel, the author presents the terrible episode as the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy, the historical expression of Jeremiah’s ominous vision, “In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not” (Matthew 2:17–18). Heinsius also foregrounds the extent to which the events of the tragedy are the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy. Act I features an angel and a chorus of prophets and pious men [Chorus Vatum & Piorum], all of whom establish the prophetic geography of Bethlehem and Egypt and mark the continuities across testaments Old and New.145 Given Heinsius’ claims in De Tragoediae Constitutione, the appearance of the angel—the earliest example of a deus ex machina in Herodes Infanticida—raises questions concerning licit and illicit devices. Nevertheless, while devices and dei ex machinis generally blunt the philosophical precision of tragedy, Heinsius also notes exceptions, conditions under which plots allow or warrant intervention, divine or otherwise. While he emphasizes that the denouement or solution should follow logically from the plot itself, Heinsius identifies several ways in which a poet might use a device correctly. First, devices are licit when they are extraneous to the plot.146 In this sense, devices might adorn the work as it takes shape in the complication, but they nonetheless should not belong to the principal action and should not affect the denouement. Prologues meet these criteria. Citing Sophocles’ Ajax, Seneca’s Hercules Furens, and 144  Although it was first printed in 1632, both Grotius and Honerdus had seen a version of Herodes Infanticida before 1611. The work belongs to the same period as Grotius’ Adamus Exul (1601) and Christus Patiens (1608) as well as Honerdus’ Thamara (1611), to say nothing of the lost Moses Legifer, sive Nomoclastes, which Honerdus evidently wrote during the first decade of the seventeenth century. Bloemendal [2007], 219–20; HI, A2r; and Honerdus [1611], ⁂[1]r–⁂[1]v. I discuss the 1632 publication of Herodes Infanticida and the controversy that followed in detail in a forthcoming article, “Herod and the Furies: Daniel Heinsius and the Representation of Affect in Tragedy.” 145  HI, 16. 146  Aristotle uses the Greek term δρᾶμα here, when he stipulates that devices “should be employed for events outside the drama” [1454b.2–3], but Heinsius renders “drama” nearly synonymous with fabula when he defines it as the “principal action” of the tragedy. PT, 66; DTC, 103; AP, 80–1.

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Euripides’ Ion as examples, Heinsius illustrates how prologues involving devices are “both common and held in great esteem” [usitatum est, et multum dignitatis habet], relating the plot at the outset while remaining external to the principal action.147 By Heinsius’ own account, the angel who appears at the outset of Act I serves as the προλογίζων. Charged with delivering the prologue, this angel recounts prophecies that also appear in Scripture and were duly available to Matthew and his contemporaries, celebrating Bethlehem as well as the newborn Jesus and, in a harrowing tragic idiom, looking forward to Herod’s fury, the massacre itself, and the sorrow of the bereaved mothers. To the letter, the angel does not participate in the action of the tragedy nor does it convey any information which is not also presented to the personae across Herodes Infanticida. From the outset, then, even the angel trades in a prophetic language that is available to the personae in the tragedy as well as its audience. The chorus of prophets and pious men who punctuate Act I praise Egypt as a place of asylum; like the angel, the choral speakers are “prophetic” only insofar as they are “pious” readers of Scripture, recognizing the fulfillment of prophecy in current events. They share the evangelist Matthew’s own reference to Hosea 11:1, where God announces his love for Israel and promises that his son will come out of Egypt to deliver them. Herod’s massacre, in turn, precipitates Jesus’ initial flight into Egypt, from which he is later called in accordance with prophecy. There are no personae in Herodes Infanticida who are ignorant of these prophecies, only their precise meanings. In De Tragoediae Constitutione, Heinsius recognizes that devices are licit—even necessary—when used to communicate “things that have happened and cannot be known by man” or “things that are going to occur and as yet lie hidden to man.”148 In these cases, Heinsius acknowledges, gods appear to ignorant men to disclose knowledge beyond their capacities. Gods communicate events, past or future, which could not otherwise be known.149 But these conditions do not apply in Herodes Infanticida. There are certainly many things beyond human comprehension—the holy mysteries, for instance, the province of theology—but Herodes Infanticida exhibits Heinsius’ great confidence in the ars critica, in poetry, history, and philosophy; “little exists that cannot be known by man” [pauca sunt quae sciri ab homine non possint], he insists, even with respect to prophecy.150 Indeed, Joseph shares this prophetic perspective at the outset of Act II as he praises the infant Jesus. His source, in other words, is Scripture, not direct revelation or divine intervention. Gazing upon Mary, who just “gave a father to his people, salvation to the world, and a king to kings,” Joseph affirms their steadfast belief in 147  PT, 66–7; DTC, 103–4. 148  This is a faithful reading of the Poetics wherein Aristotle gives similar conditions, admitting devices that reveal “preceding events beyond human knowledge, or subsequent events requiring prediction and announcement; for we ascribe to the gods the capacity to see all things” [1454b.2–6]. In Heinsius’ translation, devices lay bare “quae scire homo non potest, ideoque praecidenda & exponenda sunt,” as “Diis enim concedimus, ut omnia provideant.” PT, 66; DTC, 103, 284. 149  Under these circumstances, gods might even appear in the denouement, to resolve the plot when there is no other way to divulge crucial information. But Heinsius stresses that such exceptions are rare, and generally unnecessary. 150  PT, 67–8; DTC, 105–6.



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the God in their midst: “We believe, father of things, and faith is sufficient in the ominous darkness.”151 Led by the star in the east, the three Magi appear in Act II and mock Herod’s proud attempt to circumvent prophecy: “He is arrogant, who would wage war with heaven, who would stay the Fates, who would drag the stars and destined authorities backwards.”152 Heinsius draws our attention to an often-neglected aspect of the Scriptural story—namely, how Herod sent the Magi to find Jesus, albeit under false pretenses, and how they, in turn, recognized his deception and refused to report back to him, returning to their own homes instead. In the Scriptural account, God appears in a dream, instructing the Magi to avoid Herod and protect Jesus. In Herodes Infanticida, however, no such dream episode is described or depicted. Granted, we learn in the Argument that “having been warned in sleep without the tyrant’s knowledge” [inscio tyranno, moniti in somno], the Magi return to their native lands.153 But this lies outside the action of the tragedy. In the text itself, Heinsius omits the evangelist’s account of direct revelation, suggesting that the Magi might even have come to this conclusion based on the events themselves. Herod’s intentions are apparent in his speech and action. Later in Act II Heinsius introduces a second device into the action: a group of angels “draw the cradle of the Lord [cunas Domini ducunt] to a part of the upper theater and consequently point it out [monstrant]” to the three Magi.154 Albeit a powerful theatrical gesture, the device is merely another adornment. As it appears in the complication and does not interrupt or undermine the principal action in any way, it also meets the criteria that Heinsius articulates in De Tragoediae Constitutione. Paradoxically, this most spectacular moment in Herodes Infanticida, the elevation of the infant Christ, has no immediate effect on the plot, serving only as an ornament for audiences familiar with Scripture and devotional practice. This marks Christ’s only appearance in the tragedy, although he is the subject of the Hebrew prophecies and the object of Herod’s rage. Christ appears via a machine, but he does not intervene in the events of the tragedy. Heinsius is not categorically averse to divine intervention in tragedy, even in the resolution of a plot. He readily admits that a device is warranted, for instance, in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. To ensure victory over the Trojans, Greek forces are directed to retrieve Philoctetes from the island of Lemnos and convince him to join the war effort at Troy; Philoctetes, however, refuses to accompany them due to a severe pain in his foot and his abiding hatred for Odysseus (who abandoned him on Lemnos in the first place). It is natural, reasonable, and consistent for Philoctetes to decline to aid his enemy Odysseus, even if the Greek Neoptolemus, who shows Philoctetes kindness and mercy, is also put at risk in his refusal. Heinsius understood that “it was humanly impossible to get Philoctetes to go to Troy,” so Sophocles is forced to introduce a device into the tragedy: a deified Hercules appears, promising that Philoctetes’ pains will cease at 151  HI, 22: “gentibus patrem suis,/ Orbi salutem, regibus regem dedit”; “Credimus, rerum parens,/ Et ominosa sufficit noctis fides.” 152  HI, 23–4: “Adstat superbus, bella qui coelo gerat,/ Qui fata sistat, astra qui retro trahat,/ Et destinata sceptra.” 153  HI, A4r. 154  HI, 24.

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Troy and that he will find glory in battle, at which point the eponymous hero acquiesces.155 An intervention was necessary as Philoctetes, “having to be compelled by authority” [autoritate compellendus], would not have left Lemnos under ordinary circumstances.156 But the infant Christ has no such purpose, no bearing on the plot. His is an ornamental function in Herodes Infanticida, crucial to the world of the tragedy but not its action.157 Herod first appears in Act III. Exasperated, he recounts his political woes and ponders the meaning of the prophecy concerning his downfall, wondering about the identity and authority of the promised “child born to rule.”158 Here Heinsius introduces a cast of legates, envoys that Herod sent abroad to inquire about the infant; having returned from their mission, they have no concrete information, although they offer a survey of antique prophecy across the region and relate their inability to ascertain the truth. One legate, reporting from Babylon, testifies that their studies and oracles yield no insight into the prophecy.159 Another legate attempts to understand the Hebrew origins of the prophecy. Unable to ascertain its source he nevertheless describes, in derisive detail, that “mob of shepherds [who] attend to it and believe whatever rumor and the multitude may have produced.”160 The envoy struggles to describe the diversity of positions and interpretations among the Hebrews. Some “honor the governors” and abhor dubious prophecies, others seize the opportunity to foment unrest and dissent; in either case, he reports, “Diverse things being sung are doubtful.”161 This envoy nonetheless recognizes the political danger of the prophecy, independent of its veracity: “Some believe with contempt to be able to be delivered, even if each one is afraid. A spirit that is hateful and mindful of its fate proves strong and fearless.”162 In the exchange between Herod and the legates, Heinsius dramatizes a scene of interpretation, based on 155  PT, 69; DTC, 108. 156  Hercules’ brief interruption via machine ends with a pious commonplace: “remember when you conquer the land to show reverence to the gods”—“εὐσεβεῖν τὰ πρὸς θεούς,” which Melanchthon and Winshemius translate as “Religionem”—“for all things come after this in the mind of Zeus my father. For reverence for the gods does not die along with mortals; whether they live or die, it never perishes.” PT, 69; DTC, 108; Sophocles, Philoctetes [1994], 404–5; [1546], f6r. 157  Christ is of course integral to the action. But it is important that his birth does not necessarily precipitate Herod’s abominable act; Herod’s is a human fury, a human sin, for which he alone is responsible. 158  HI, 31: “Visone puero, patrium repetunt solum,/ An non reperto? natus imperio puer,/ Quis? unde? quo parente? qua spe, qua domo,/ Possessa domino regna, rapturus venit? Qua nosse, primum muneris vestri fuit.” 159  HI, 32. 160 HI, 34: “Incerta origo, nec sat exactum genus/ Nascentis . . . / turba pastorum assidet,/ Creditque, quicquid rumor ac vulgus serit.” 161  HI, 34–5: Pars Bethlemi vatibus visum ferunt; Pars, nec repertum. dubia diversi canunt. Nec Laudat eadem, quisquis, exosus nova, Favet imperenti. Pars feroces spiritus, Rebusque motis impetum opponi monent: Nec negligendum minuma rectori probant. 162 HI, 34–5: “Pars vindicari posse contemptu autumat/ Quod quisq[ue] trepidat. Fortem & impavidum arguit/ Despector animus, ac suae sortis memor.”



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limited information, in the absence of faith. Under these conditions, Herod threatens the countryside with indiscriminate violence. He appeals to the “ancient Furies” and calls them to witness his promise: “I will pluck the houses of Bethlehem from the ground,” he claims, and “heap them upon the shepherds” unless the ­people cede “the death of one for a million deaths.”163 Act IV, in turn, begins with a controversial scene in which Herod’s deceased wife Mariamne appears to him in a dream, accompanied by the Furies themselves, to recount his past crimes and to verify that the Scriptural prophecies will end in his downfall. Heinsius’ early detractors fixated on this sequence. After Herodes Infanticida was printed in 1632, for instance, Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac censured Heinsius for mingling figures sacred and profane in one tragedy, claiming that the Furies undermined any sense of Christian justice in the work.164 In his 1635 response, Heinsius offered an exhaustive philological defense of the tragedy based on Roman history and Patristic diction, explicitly underlining many of his earlier claims in De Tragoediae Constitutione. Heinsius also affirmed, unequivocally, that the Furies represent Herod’s passions [affectus] in a vivid and historically appropriate idiom.165 They are noetic [νοῆται] personae that “do not exist except insofar as they occur in the mind [in animo consistunt].”166 In this stylized depiction of a nightmare the audience is privy to Herod’s recollection and despair. What early critics like Balzac and Claudius Salmasius neglected entirely, however, is how Heinsius substitutes Herod’s dream for the actual dream described in Matthew 2:13, where an angel appears to Joseph and instructs him to flee with his family into Egypt, wherein they must remain “until I bring them word: for Herode will seeke the young childe, to destroy him.” Once again, Heinsius deliberately omits an evangelical account of direct revelation. Heinsius replaces this Scriptural dream with Herod’s nightmare, his own handiwork, an expression of the tyrant’s rage and despair, already wellestablished in the tragedy. In turn, when Heinsius does dramatize Joseph’s decision to flee to Egypt, he eschews any reference to divine intervention. Instead, he offers a rapid exchange between Anna and Joseph, in hemistichomythia, where Joseph anticipates Herod’s impulsive act. The flight into Egypt is not the result of direct revelation. Instead, Joseph identifies the “engineer” [machinator] behind their departure as “Herod’s rage” [Herodae furor].167 Heinsius traces this rage across the tragedy, turning from Joseph to Herod himself who insists, against the instincts of his attendants, to kill every boy younger than two years old in the region.168 No one at court can convince him otherwise, even as his attendants beg him to show moderation and restraint.169 As Heinsius 163  HI, 36: “Vel Betlehemi tecta convellam solo,/ Pastoribusque, rapta, convulsa, ingeram:/ Vel caedibus ferroque grassatus, necem/ Per mille mortes, unus, unius dabo.” 164  Balzac [1658], 164–84. On the controversy and its afterlives in France see Lebègue [1938], 388–94; Kern [1949], 66–76; and my forthcoming “Herod and the Furies: Daniel Heinsius and the Representation of Affect in Tragedy.” 165  Heinsius [1636], 46. 166  Heinsius [1636], 46; PT, 134; DTC, 205. Salmasius cites Julius Caesar Scaliger and draws distinctions between tragedy and performance to contest this. See Salmasius [1644], 59–124. 167  HI, 46. 168  HI, 49. 169  HI, 52.

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emphasizes Herod’s rage and conviction, Act IV ends with a chorus of Roman Soldiers. Contemplating the grisly task ahead of them, they wistfully yearn for a miraculous tragic device to return them to their native Rome, just as (they say) Medea was carried away from Corinth by dragons [Medea draconibus].170 Yet no such device arrives. Instead the wistful prayers and hymns of the nostalgic soldiers give way to the frantic cries of the mothers of Bethlehem who, at the outset of Act V, flee to Jerusalem as their children are slaughtered.171 It is a devastating scene which, as Jan Bloemendal suggests, betrays debts to Senecan drama as Heinsius gives voice to the refugees in their immediate sorrow, to the mothers who address their dead children in desperation.172 Heinsius then presents the scene from a different perspective as a messenger relates the massacre to Herod in horrific detail. Herod is undaunted by such shocking details, and is only moved once the messenger claims that the people still believe that the child has escaped to Egypt. Herod’s fury is renewed, and he exits the tragedy uncertain of his future but nonetheless determined to kill the infant Jesus. In the final chorus, as the mothers who fled to Jerusalem mourn their children once more, a throng of angels emerges to address them: Go, wretched parents, surrender to the earth the limbs which, anointed with gore, may now shoot forth a new glorious sprig, free from fear. A child has already been born who through fire, dreadful torture on the wheel, and crucifixion, will consecrate the beautiful spirits of the victims to God.173

These angels, the final device in Herodes Infanticida, identify Herod’s victims as the first martyrs, their sacrifice sanctified and renewed by Christ’s impending passion and death. In this sense, the angels seem to console the grieving mothers, looking forward to the salvation and grace in Jesus that follow from their deaths. But it is actually unclear whether the grieving mothers hear these angels or not.174 They do not respond in Herodes Infanticida. In this sense, the final device does not affect the action or the solution of the tragedy. It is another adornment. Heinsius even suggests that the angelic chorus communicates something that is unnecessary to know, at least from the perspective of criticism. This principle—that “many things that cannot be known are in fact not necessary to know”—is crucial to Heinsius’ theses on plot in De Tragoediae Constitutione. He illustrates this in his critical judgment against Hercules Oetaeus.175 As the fabulae are basically the same, Heinsius begins by comparing Hercules Oetaeus 170  HI, 55, 58. 173  HI, 69:

171  HI, 58.

172  Bloemendal [2007], 229–30; HI, 61.

Ite, squallidae parentes, membra iam terris date, Quae, cruore delibutae, germen emittant novum, Inclytum, pavoris expers. Iam iuventus nascitur, Quae per ignes, per rotarum dira tormenta ac cruces, Numini pulchros dicabit victimarum spiritus. 174  HI, 69: “Et viam monstrabit orbi, sanguinis compendio,/ Qua patet supremus aether; praevio primum Duce,/ Quem, Deo nunc grata, Memphis abdito condit sinu.” 175  He does not attribute this tragedy to Seneca. See Heinsius, “De Tragoediarum authoribus” in Seneca [1611], 483–99.



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to Sophocles’ Women of Trachis or Trachiniae. In both tragedies, Hercules, ­unintentionally poisoned by his jealous wife Deianeira, suffers intense pain before he is carried to a pyre to be put out of his misery. Heinsius praises Sophocles for eschewing any device, thus retaining the consistency of the plot. The Trachiniae depicts a single action: Hercules’ lust. This was a well-established interpretation by 1611. Already in the mid-sixteenth century, Philipp Melanchthon’s student Vitus Winshemius noticed this in his Latin edition of the play, identifying Hercules’ own “wandering lust” [vaga libido] as “the cause of the sad calamity” [tristi calamitati causam] that befell him: “Lust was truly his ruin and the ruin of many others” [Libido vero illi, quae & multis aliis, exitio fuit].176 The tragedy thus traces the career of Hercules’ vicious lust to its natural and probable conclusion—that is, to his death—and ends as Hercules curses “the great unkindness of the gods displayed in these events, gods who beget us and are called our fathers but who look on such sufferings as these!”177 And as Hercules is conveyed to the fire on the mountain Oeta, his son Hyllus trembles at the terrible power and inscrutable will of the gods, exclaiming that, “The future none can see, and the present is pitiful for us and shameful for them . . . you have lately seen terrible deaths, and many sufferings unprecedented, and none of these things is not Zeus.”178 Sophocles resolves the Women of Trachis without a device, foregrounding Hercules’ human action and evoking horror and pity—Sophocles, whom Heinsius describes here as nothing less than “divine” [vir divinus].179 But the author of the Latin Hercules Oetaeus shows no such genius or restraint. Unwilling to let audiences tarry between horror and pity, the poet introduces a device into the action which is absent in the Trachiniae. The fabula is “changed and indeed for the worse” [mutatur & in peius quidem] when, as Hercules’ mother Alcmene grieves for her son, Hercules himself appears via machine and confirms that he has reached heaven. He eases her sorrow, testifying to his apotheosis, claiming “My valour has paved a way for me now to the stars and the very gods.”180 The conversation between Alcmene and Hercules is hopeful, the final chorus inspiring and triumphant, but all to deleterious effect. Not only is Hercules’ posthumous appearance ambiguous—Alcmene wonders, “Am I deceived, or do my eyes reckon they saw my son? My poor mind cannot believe it,” inviting audiences to question the veracity of her vision—but it is also “alien to tragedy,” imported “without cause and in the worst possible fashion” [sine causa & pessime].181 The problem is not simply the happy or optimistic ending of the tragedy. The device obscures cause 176  Sophocles [1546], Y3v, Y4v. See also Lurie [2012], 442–4. 177  In this sense, Sophocles confirms an absolute, established by God among the pagans in ­antiquity and regnant “from then until the sacred patriarchs”—namely, that lust is wicked and “that God should punish the wicked but do good to the good.” In their respective editions, Melanchthon and Winshemius noted how “when they hold God accountable, even great men relapse at the height of disaster” [Eo recidunt etiam magni homines in extremis calamitatibus ut in Deum vocent in crimen], while Thomas Naogeorgus claimed that the hero, aware of his “necessary fate” [fatalem necessitatem], rashly “accuses the gods of ingratitude” [Deos accusat ingratitudinis]. Sophocles, The Women of Trachis [1994], 248–51; [1558], 381, 386; [1546], b5v–b6r, Y4r. 178 Sophocles, The Women of Trachis [1994], 248–51. 179  PT, 68; DTC, 106. 180  Seneca [2004], 492–3. 181  Seneca [2004], 496–7; PT, 68; DTC, 106.

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and effect and shifts our attention from human vice to capricious divine power. It is not necessary that Alcmene address future events, nor is it necessary or credible that Hercules confirm his apotheosis. On the contrary, these events detract from the tragic effect and consistency of Hercules Oetaeus, so much so that Heinsius likens it more to Plautus’ Amphitryon than to the Trachiniae.182 Heinsius even suggests that the craven tragedian responsible for Hercules Oetaeus added the device in search of applause, with little regard for form or philosophy. Attentive to this critical distinction, Heinsius follows the example of the Trachiniae and meticulously avoids unnecessary information in Herodes Infanticida. Indeed, although the tragedy features several key devices, it does not have a single instance of a deus ex machina that affects the plot. The unity of the plot is never interrupted. And with respect to matters beyond the scope of the Herodes Infanticida, to the aftermath of the massacre of the infants, Heinsius maintains that “many things that cannot be known are in fact not necessary to know.”183 Given the subject matter, this is startling. For the dead infants and the grieving mothers, there is no immediate sense that their agonies have larger meaning beyond the prophetic vision that the personae across the tragedy share. Strictly speaking, there are no martyrs or sacrifices in the tragedy because the infants’ deaths are not endowed with such Christic or eschatological significance in the tragedy itself. This is not necessary to the plot, and is reserved instead for documents outside of the tragedy, to which the angels in the final chorus point—namely, to the excerpts from two Patristic sources which Heinsius appended to Herodes Infanticida in 1632, to make the theological import of the tragedy clear: Peter Chrysologus’ sermon on the massacred infants, De Infantibus Caesis, and Basil of Seleucia’s Oratio 37, a detailed description of the slaughter.184 Both works stand in stark contrast to Herodes Infanticida. In his fifth-century sermon on the massacre, for instance, Chrysologus praises “The whole cohort that arose alongside its King” [Coorta Regi cohors sua], celebrating the legion of infants who were “eager [gestit] to die before [their] King rather than die with him,” depicted here as “soldiers dedicated to Christ [who] began to fight before they began to live, to do battle before playing, to shed their blood before drinking up all the milk from their mothers’ breasts.”185 And while Basil of Seleucia dwells at length on the grisly aspects of the massacre in his fifth-century Oratio 37 (which Heinsius retitles Hypotyposis Infanticidii), he nevertheless affirms that “Christ the Lord of all things certainly imposed the swiftest punishment on the cruel actors of such wicked deeds.”186 182  Even in Amphitryon, however, Jupiter is licensed to “speak of things past and future” [praeterea, furua ac facta elocuturum] whereas Hercules’ future, revealed to Alcmene via device, is ancillary to the plot of Hercules Oetaeus. PT, 69; DTC, 107. 183  PT, 67–8; DTC, 106. 184 HI, 70–4. 185 HI, 70; Peter Chrysologus [1627], 523; [2005], 261–2. 186  Quintilian describes hypotyposis as “the expression in words of a given situation in such a way that it seems to be a matter of seeing rather than of hearing”; Paul, moreover, uses the term at both I Timothy 1:16 and II Timothy 1:13 to describe an example, form, or pattern that will have future relevance—not exactly a “type” but related nonetheless to Pareus’ project in his commentary on Revelation. Quintilian seems to recognize this sense as well, particularly when he suggests that hypotyposis “cannot be regarded as a Narrative” as narrative deals with things past and present; insofar as orators



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These are appropriate theological responses to the massacre, but stand remote from the tragedy in which Christ merely adorns the events that unfold. As Heinsius employs devices throughout Herodes Infanticida he nevertheless follows the criteria he established in De Tragoediae Constitutione. In a tragedy that revolves around Christ’s miraculous incarnation, there is yet no instance of divine intervention or direct revelation, no point at which the principal action is either altered or interrupted. Elsewhere Heinsius describes this episode, the massacre of the innocents, as Christ’s introduction to humanity, his “welcome,” proving that even in his nativity his life involved “nothing other than suffering, pain, and great sorrow” [het begin is anders niet dan lijden/Dan pijn en groot verdriet].187 Heinsius’ Christ, after all, “never laughed but wept, and above all avoided that foul superfluity of worldly pleasure and joy,” a testament to his acumen and fortitude; laughter, Heinsius claims, is “a proof and sign of a mind acting not from reason but the rule of sense [e sensuum praescripto],” evincing a passion that is “excessively human” [plus humani] and thus alien to Christ.188 Heinsius’ more recent critics suggest that Herodes Infanticida lacks “a coherent dramatic plot,” its disparate scenes only “loosely connected to each other.”189 Admittedly, Heinsius asks patience of his readers. Herod does not appear until Act III. If contemporary audiences expected a stage tyrant from the outset, a figure to give meaning to the Shakespearean phrase “out-Herods Herod,” they are instead immersed in a prophetic milieu populated by angels and pious men. Across Act II, moreover, Joseph honors Mary and celebrates the birth of Christ, testifying (in a controversial classical idiom) that “this unimportant household begat all of Olympus” [Totumque Olympum parva suscepit domus].190 But Herodes Infanticida does indeed follow a single, coherent plot which is, as Heinsius affirms in the Argument, “direct, not complex nor featuring an instance of peripeteia” [rectum est, non involutum, sive πεπλεγμένον].191 The complete action that Heinsius imitates is Herod’s attempt to interpret Scripture and, subsequently, to act on this interpretation. The various machinae that appear across the tragedy adorn the work and confirm the truth and singularity of Scripture, but the chief action is nevertheless Herod’s fear of the scriptural prophecy that grounds the world of the tragedy. This abiding preoccupation with Scriptural interpretation draws the seemingly disparate scenes together. In Acts I and II, for instance, the angel, the Magi, Joseph, and the chorus of prophets and pious men all contemplate the Hebrew prophecies concerning Bethlehem, Egypt, and the birth of Christ. In Acts III and IV, Herod and his legates contemplate the same prophecies. The former cohort proceeds with faith, the latter with frustration. Thus Herodes Infanticida is a remarkably human story that traces Herod’s paranoid interpretation of Scripture to its conclusion: the slaughter of the innocents. Heinsius frames the events in employ hypotyposis to influence future decisions, Quintilian relates it to prophecy. HI, 71–4; and Basil of Seleucia [1621], 191–3; Quintilian [2001], IV:56–7, II:220–1. 187  Heinsius [1965], 266–8 [ll. 441–54]. 188  PT, 14; DTC, 17. 189  Becker-Cantarino [1978], 131; Bloemendal [2007], 222, 226–7. 190  This is precisely the sort of language that Balzac and Salmasius censure. HI, 19. 191  HI, A4r.

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Matthew 2 as a human tragedy, disclosing nature itself to readers, evoking fear and pity. He resists the urge to frame the slaughter of the children as an eschatological celebration of Christ’s triumph. The massacre instead marks the probable (if not necessary) outcome of Herod’s actions and disposition. Even at the end of the tragedy, Heinsius troubles the degree to which the intervening angels actually comfort the grieving mothers. It is ultimately unclear whether these lamenting refugees, bereft of their children, can hear them. It is also unclear whether or not the angels are able to comfort them. Herodes Infanticida is a tragic study of divinity and necessity, of prophecy and predestination, which foregrounds the natural human agencies and capacities at work in Scripture. In this case, Heinsius suggests that questions of election, reprobation, providence, or will are not as germane to Scripture as are the more mundane reflections on human action and the limits of interpretation. Miracles and heavenly interventions are not absent from the plot, but they do not fundamentally alter the probable or necessary course of events in Herodes Infanticida. In his theological writing Heinsius endorsed Contra-Remonstrant positions on predestination and providence. In his writing on tragedy, Heinsius posed a critical alternative to such speculative theological theses on divinity and salvation, focusing instead on natural notions of causality, probability, and necessity, exposing the degree to which human experience is best described in these terms. In Herodes Infanticida, moreover, he reframes Scripture as a tragedy, eschewing theological explanation, demonstrating how this key episode—the massacre of the innocents— is an all-too-human story of fear, power, interpretation, and misinterpretation. As a tragedian, Heinsius revises Scripture so as to minimize divine intervention. Herod’s persecution of the infant Christ is thus a study in human ignorance and interpretation; the children who fall victim to his rage are casualties of human actions set to work by fear and anxiety. Whether or not faith affords Joseph, Mary, or the infant Christ eternal salvation is incidental to the work; faith is instead an interpretive practice that leads them to seek safety in Egypt at the right time. In these studies of tragedy, Heinsius suspends the speculative theological disputes that defined the Arminian Controversy, emphasizing more mundane investigations of necessity and human action. Under these terms, he frames current events themselves as a complex tragedy whereby the focus on theological necessity and predestination obscures the more immediate and concrete notions of unity and salvation. The tragedy of the Arminian Controversy, he suggests, is its indifference to the ­probability or necessity that such disputes will bring only division and discord.

5 Greek Tragedy and Hebrew Antiquity in John Milton’s 1671 Poems So the Egyptian priest’s words in Plato were absolutely splendid: “O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children. You have in your souls no ideas from antiquity handed down by tradition. There is not a single old man among the Greeks.” In speaking of old men, I imagine, he means those who know matters of greater antiquity—that is, our tradition. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis Book I1 At sondrie times & in divers maners God spake in the olde time to our fathers by the Prophets: In these last days he hathe spoken unto us by his Sonne, whom he hathe made heir of all things, by whome also he made the worldes, Who being the brightnes of the glorie, and the ingraved forme of his persone, & bearing up all things by his mightie worde, hathe by him self purged our sinnes [καθαρισμὸν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν], and sitteth at the right hand of the majestie in the highest places. Hebrews 1:1–32

Satan introduces tragedy in Milton’s 1671 volume Paradise Regain’d . . . To which is added Samson Agonistes. The preface to Samson Agonistes, “Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy,” may describe the form; it may prepare readers for a species of tragedy “much different from what among us passes for best”; it may even “vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common Interludes”; but Satan first draws tragedy into the ambit of the 1671 volume in his rich description of Greek learning intended to seduce Jesus in the wilderness in Book IV of Paradise Regain’d.3 Assuming Jesus is “addicted more/ To contemplation and profound dispute” (PR IV.214–15) than to wealth or power, Satan turns the Son of God’s attention to “Athens the eye of Greece, Mother of Arts/ And Eloquence” (IV.240–1), the font of human learning at which he might imbibe the knowledge of the 1  CA, 260–1; CS, 154 [my emphasis]. See also Clement of Alexandria [1629]. Clement quotes and subsequently interprets Plato’s Timaeus. See Plato [1929], 32–3. 2  Danker [2000], 49–52; Geneva Bible [2007], 102r, 72v; Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece [1993], 563, 421; and Sacrae Bibliae [1535], 282v, 254v. 3  M1671, 67. When I cite the poetry, for the ease of the reader I give abbreviations—“PR” and “SA,” for Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes, respectively—and line numbers in the text. Emphases are as in the original text except where indicated otherwise.

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Gentiles and thus “extend [his] mind o’re all the world” (PR IV.223). Among the manifold intellectual resources offered at Athens, Satan includes tragedy: Thence what the lofty grave Tragoedians taught In Chorus or Iambic, teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight receiv’d In brief sententious precepts, while they treat Of fate, and chance, and change in human life; High actions, and high passions best describing.  (IV.261–6)

Satan’s description, albeit brief, is an accurate assessment of the form by early modern standards, not unlike Milton’s own depiction of tragedy in the later preface to Samson Agonistes. In fact, early editors extolled Satan’s description of tragedy, collating this section of Paradise Regain’d with Milton’s own description in Samson Agonistes. The eighteenth-century editor Thomas Newton, for instance, claimed that “the character here given of the ancient Greek tragedy is very just and noble; and the English reader cannot form a better idea of it in its highest beauty and perfection than by reading our author’s Samson Agonistes.”4 Satan presumably refers Jesus to “Aeschulus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three Tragic Poets unequall’d yet by any,” whether in Restoration England or the antique wilderness of Judea.5 He thus seems to share Milton’s own tragic archive. Satan recognizes how ancient tragedy was read and digested as well, not only as a series of discrete dramatic works but also as a repository of “brief sententious precepts,” moveable commonplaces that “Philosophers and other gravest Writers” might readily use “both to adorn and illustrate their discourse.”6 He acknowledges the fit measure and matter of tragedy and locates tragedy in relation to epic as well as rhetoric and philosophy. Generous (if undiscerning) readers might accept Satan’s description as a précis of Milton’s own account of form and function in the preface to Samson Agonistes, “Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy.” Jesus responds, in turn, by disparaging Attic tragedy in an idiom that is remarkably different from the preface to Samson Agonistes. Jesus does not reject the resources of tragedy tout court. Instead, he praises the poetry of the Hebrews and posits that “Greece from us these Arts deriv’d” (PR IV.338, my emphasis). After he derides the Greek philosophers and their acolytes “As Children gathering pibles on the shore” (PR IV.330), Jesus cites the robust corpus of Hebrew poetry in which he takes “delight” (PR IV.331, echoing Satan’s promise of “delight” at IV.263). The poetry and philosophy of the Hebrews evidently pre-date the flourishing of the arts in Athens. Martin Luther claims as much in his 1534 preface to the Book of Tobit. Insisting that among the Jews ranked many “outstanding people—prophets, bards, poets, and the like—who in all sorts of ways diligently set forth the Word of God,” 4  Milton [1753], 170. See also Milton [1795], 221–3. 5  As Nicholas McDowell makes patently clear, Milton holds Euripides in particular esteem, on par with Scriptural authority. Hannah Crawforth, moreover, illustrates how Milton drew upon a detailed scholarly tradition in his attention to form and meter. See M1671, 68; McDowell [2016]; and Crawforth [2016]. 6  M1671, 66.



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Luther suggests that, “It may even be that the Greeks picked up from the Jews their art of presenting comedies and tragedies, as well as a lot of other wisdom and worship.”7 Milton’s Jesus confirms this while distinguishing Greek art and erudition as derivative and crude. Indeed, Marx’s famous dictum concerning world history is even more appropriate in Paradise Regain’d than in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852): tragedy, together with the “Hebrew Songs and Harps in Babylon” (PR IV.336), appeared first among the Jews as such; later, among the Greeks, there is only farce. Greek tragedy is “Ill imitated” (PR IV.339), unable to realize effective or compelling mimesis. Jesus’ “Ill imitated” looks deliberately forward to Milton’s own definition of tragedy, apropos of Aristotle, in the preface to Samson Agonistes, where he insists that katharsis works when “a kind of delight” is “stirr’d up by reading or seeing those passions [pity and fear, or terror] well imitated.”8 Yet in Paradise Regain’d Jesus claims that the Greek tragedians “loudest sing/ The vices of thir Deities, and thir own/ In Fable, Hymn, or Song, so personating/ Thir Gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame” (PR IV.339–42). In Hebrew poetry, however, “God is prais’d aright, and Godlike men,/ The Holiest of Holies, and his Saints” (IV.348–9). Unparalleled and sublime works like the Psalms “are from God inspir’d” (PR IV.350). What is redeemable in Greek tragedy is not properly Greek. Jesus “sagely” indicates, rather, that “where moral virtue is express’t” in Attic tragedy, it is evidence only of that “light of Nature not in all quite lost” (PR IV.351, 352)—not, as Satan claims, because Greek tragedians are “teachers best/ Of moral prudence.” This exchange between Satan and Jesus is the first substantial account of tragedy in the 1671 volume. In his response, Milton’s Jesus offers readers an alternative to the more familiar description in the preface to Samson Agonistes. Instead of extolling tragedy “as it was antiently compos’d,” Jesus invokes the Hebrew prehistory of Attic tragedy.9 Instead of vindicating tragedy against its detractors, Jesus points to its limits. But the two treatments (in Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes) are indeed compatible, their connections made explicit once we explore Milton’s influences and begin to reconstruct his tragic archive beyond the antique Athenians themselves—that is, beyond Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristotle’s Poetics. Indeed, Milton mines an alternative history of tragedy, marginalizing the antique tragedies in Greek and Latin that generally serve as points of departure in the study of Miltonic tragedy, turning instead to often-neglected theological sources and interlocutors for whom tragedy is a critical touchstone. In this case, Milton’s Jesus comes to tragedy by way of the Church Fathers Clement of Alexandria and Socrates of Constantinople, both of whom implicitly inform Milton’s accounts of tragedy and Greek erudition in Paradise Regain’d . . . To which is added Samson Agonistes. While Milton was often critical of the Fathers—in Of Reformation, for instance, he famously decries “the foul errors, the ridiculous wresting of Scripture, the Heresies, the vanities thick sown through the volums of Justin Martyr, Clemens, 7  Luther [1960], 345–6; and [1961], 108–9. Thanks to Micha Lazarus for drawing my attention to Luther’s prefaces. 8  M1671, 66 [my emphasis]. 9  M1671, 66.

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Origen, Tertullian and others of eldest time”—he also praised their wisdom and piety.10 Clement of Alexandria and Socrates of Constantinople are immediately relevant to both of the 1671 poems insofar as they are the two major sources for the belief that Paul quoted Euripides at I Corinthians 15:33, a view that Milton espouses in the preface on tragedy. And where Clement and Socrates support this tragic provenance—in Book I of the Stromateis and Book III of the Historia Ecclesiastica, respectively—they also address the vexed relationship between Christian faith and heathen learning, particularly the poetry and philosophy of the Greeks. As I illustrate below, these Patristic loci inform Jesus’ reply to Satan. Far from showing a “contempt” for Athenian art or erudition, Milton invites readers to locate Jesus’ critical response in a dynamic relationship to the relevant preface to Samson Agonistes, the most focused and deliberate defense of heathen learning in the 1671 volume, and to the biblical tragedy itself.11 Taken together, these approaches to tragedy reproduce a dialectical tension that Clement describes at length and which Socrates of Constantinople locates in the history of the primitive Church. As these Patristic informants help reconcile Athens and Jerusalem, they also shape Milton’s meditations on antique tragedy, inextricable from his poetic investigations of faith, form, and scholarly endeavor. This chapter begins with the debates concerning Paul’s citation of Euripides—a claim that was largely abandoned by 1671 as textual scholars attributed the adage to Menander but which Milton nonetheless affirms in Samson Agonistes. Milton’s investments in Paul’s Euripides and the sources for this attribution are revealing, enabling us to see how he and his early modern contemporaries negotiated the fraught relationship between sacred matter and profane form, between Scripture and tragedy. The debates concerning Paul’s Euripides also point to sources which are often neglected, Patristic texts or surveys of antique rituals and practices, which Milton (and so many others) mined to understand Attic tragedy or Aristotle’s Poetics. Although Euripides figures prominently across Clement of Alexandria’s corpus, for instance, and the Stromateis contain unique fragments of lost tragedies as well as theses on poetics, scholars rarely turn to such works to make sense of Paradise Regain’d or Samson Agonistes. Across this chapter I draw upon such antique sources, expanding Milton’s tragic archive beyond the usual suspects to include histories of tragedy, philosophy, and reception that take shape with explicit reference to Hebrew antiquity. Tragedy and philosophy alike emerge here as Hebrew endeavors that are corrupted and misunderstood by the Greeks. This chapter, in turn, illustrates how Jesus, assuming the Hebrew provenance of tragedy and philosophy, lays claim to both in Paradise Regain’d. Moreover, I illustrate how Milton understands katharsis itself in sacred terms, as a rational process with origins in Mosaic philosophy. Jesus is the first to be initiated by katharsis, or lustratio, in the 10  Milton called Clement “S. Pauls disciple” and “a fellow labourer with the Apostles”; Milton also drew directly from Socrates of Constantinople’s Historia Ecclesiastica in the Areopagitica, particularly in his account of Julian the Apostate’s reign. Milton, Of Reformation [1931], 21; and “The Reason of Church-Government” [1953], 781, 792. 11  See Swanson and Mulryan [1991].



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1671 volume. This invites us to read katharsis in Samson Agonistes as a process by which the passions are put to use in the service of comprehending God, by reason and Scripture. A T R A G I C PAU L : I C O R I N T H I A N S 1 5 : 3 3 AND TEXTUAL SCHOLARSHIP c.1671 In the preface to Samson Agonistes, Milton affirms that, “The Apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the Text of Holy Scripture, I Cor. 15.33.”12 The verse in question, “φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ᾿ ὁμιλίαι κακαί,” is often rendered into Latin as “Corrumpunt mores bonos colloquia prava” and subsequently into English as “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” By the seventeenth century, attentive readers had long argued that Scripture contained choice references to profane poetry, not only at I Corinthians 15:33 but also at Acts 17:28, where the author quotes Aratus’ third-century hexameter poem the Phaenomena, and at Titus 1:12, as Paul quotes from Epimenides of Knossos’ book De Oraculis, specifically where Epimenides, the “Poetae Vates,” claims that “Cretenses omni tempore mendaces sunt, bestiae malae, & ventres otiosi”—that is, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons.”13 But Milton’s attribution to Euripides at I Corinthians 15:33 is, by seventeenth-century standards, idiosyncratic.14 Based on nearly two centuries of exacting textual scholarship, most of Milton’s contemporaries readily accepted the comedian Menander as the source of the adage.15 Desiderius Erasmus, for instance, included it in his massive Adagiorum Chiliades Tres [1508], where he began his commentary by pointing directly to the relevant “iambic line of Menander” [Menandricus senarius], a verse “which the Apostle Paul did not disdain to quote in his epistle: Evil communications corrupt good manners” 12  M1671, 66. 13  Matthew Poole offers synopses of the long critical debates concerning attribution in his massive Synopsis Criticorum Aliorumque S. Scripturae Interpretum, initially published in four volumes between 1669 and 1676. See Poole [1674], 1546; [1676], 1145; and Testamenti Veteris Biblia Sacra [1590], 427. 14  Milton offers another untimely attribution when he writes that “Gregory Nazianzen a Father of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a Tragedy, which he entitl’d Christ Suffering.” By the 1660s, this was hardly uncontroversial; many scholars recognized the work as a Euripidean cento and pointed to incongruities between the Χριστὸς πὰσχων and the rest of Nazianzen’s corpus. In his Poeticae Institutiones Libri Tres (1647), for instance, Gerardus Joannes Vossius—drawing upon work by Caesar Baronius and Robert Bellarmine—recognized that the tragedy “does not quite smack of Gregory’s style or gravity,” particularly since the tragedian “introduces the mother of the lord wailing [eiulantem].” Vossius cautiously claims that the work might be ascribed to either Gregory or, as Baronius suggests, the elder Apollinaris. The modern editor Andrè Tuilier demonstrates how “l’authenticité du Christus patiens est généralement contestée dès le début du XVIIe siècle” at both Oxford and Cambridge, and that these English scholars based their judgments on stylistic criteria: as André Rivet recorded in his Critici Sacri Libri IV, “William Perkins reports to William Fulke that it did not appear to smack of Gregory’s style, nor did it accurately observe Iambic verse in Gregory’s usual manner” [Refert Perkinsus non fuisse visam Gulielmo Fulconi sapere stylum Gregorii, nec versum Iambicum more Gregorii accurate observare]. See M1671, 67; Gregory of Nazianzen [1969], 11–15; Vossius [2010], 352–3; and Rivet [1642], 343. 15  See, for instance, Poole [1676], 532–3.

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[φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ᾿ ὁμιλίαι κακαί].16 In later editions of the Adagia, Erasmus pointed readers specifically to I Corinthians; in his 1519 paraphrase of I  Corinthians, moreover, Erasmus worked the reference directly into the text, exhorting readers to “keep in mind always that true saying [vere dictum] of a certain comic poet [comico] of yours” before reproducing a slightly different Latin translation of the adage: “Mores bonos, colloquia corrumpunt mala.”17 Finally, Erasmus reproduced the quotation again in Greek and Latin in his Annotationes in Epistolam Pauli ad Corinthios Priorem, identifying Menander as the source while maintaining that the adage is indeed a senarius, a verse of six iambic feet.18 In their seminal collections of fragments and sententiae from New Comedy, Guillaume Morel, Henri Estienne, and Hugo Grotius all included the adage “φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί” among Menander’s literary remains.19 And where the relevant verse appears in their edition of Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis, the  textual scholars Fridericus Sylburgius and Daniel Heinsius attributed it to Menander.20 Drawing upon this body of scholarship, Jean Le Clerc could confidently ascribe the fragment to Menander in his influential 1709 edition of Menandri Reliquiae.21 Modern scholars tend to agree.22 As the consensus grew regarding the comic origin of the fragment, however, explicit references to Menander paradoxically faded from prominent editions of Scripture. In the 1560 Geneva Bible, where the translators rendered I Corinthians 15:33 “Be not deceived: evil speakings corrupt good manners,” they also included the marginal annotation “Menander in Thaidi,” tracing the fragment to the lost work Thais, a comedy featuring an eponymous prostitute. But this reference is removed from many subsequent editions of the Geneva translation (for instance, the 1602 edition of the New Testament).23 Moreover, it is absent from the 1611 Authorized Version as well as the Latin Junius-Tremellius Bible, where I Corinthians 15:33 is rendered “Ne errate. Mores bonos commercia corrumpunt mala” by Theodore Beza and “Ne erretis. Corrumpunt enim mentes [Id est, Ingenuus & probae indolis] 16  Erasmus [1508], 107v–108r; and Collected Works of Erasmus 32 [1989], 267–8 [I alter the translation here]. 17  Erasmus [2009], 184; and [1519], 150. 18  Erasmus [1990], 513. Here Erasmus notes that “it fits the meter [constat suis pedibus], if one allows the apostrophe”—that is, the elision of the syllable in “χρήσθ’ ὁμιλίαι.” Keen to show that Paul’s use of Menander was already recognized among the Church Fathers, Erasmus also directs readers to Jerome’s Commentariorum In Epistolam Beati Pauli Ad Titum Liber Unus. In Jerome’s account, Paul employed this “iambic line from a comedy of Menander” [Menandri comoedia versum sumpsit iambicum] in order to appeal to the Corinthians’ “Attic eloquence” [Attica facundia], but without approving or endorsing the “entire comedy” [totam Menandri comoediam]. See Jerome [2010], 305, 307; and [1845], 572, 573. Although he attributes the quote to Euripides, Milton evinces more than passing familiarity with Erasmus’ annotations on I Corinthians in his Colasterion. See Milton, Colasterion [1931], 249–50. 19  Morel [1553], 28–9; Stephanus [1569], 248, 351–3; and Grotius [1626], 722–3. 20  CA, 219, “16” [separate pagination for “Annotationes”]; and CS, 66–7. 21  Menander [1709], 78–9. 22  See Menander [1951], 356–7; Fitzmyer [2008], 583. Editors Collard and Cropp include it as Fragment 1024 in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Euripides. See Euripides [2008], 578–9. Modern scholars “reconcile attributions to Menander . . . Euripides . . . and an unnamed tragedian by taking the line as a Euripidean allusion in Menander.” See Traill [2001], 287. 23  See Geneva Bible [2007]; and [1989].



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suaves narrationes [Sive colloquia] malae” by Immanuel Tremellius.24 And while Desiderius Erasmus immediately identified Menander as a source for the adage, illustrating how Paul drew upon secular poetry to address the Corinthians, later editions of his Adagia obscured this connection. In the 1603 Adagia—“Newly revised and emended” [Nuper recognita & emendata] by Paulus Manutius and dedicated to Pope Gregory XIII—not only is Erasmus’ name absent from the title page, the references to I Corinthians 15:33 (as well as Tertullian, who figures prominently in Erasmus’ initial account) have been expurgated from the text of “Corrumpunt bonos mores colloquia prava.”25 In other words, attempts to identify the fragment were controversial; the reluctance to ascribe authority to any writer other than Paul reveals just how uncomfortably proximate Athens (or in this case, Corinth) is to Jerusalem. When the Reformer David Pareus—the subject of Chapter 1, whom Milton names in the 1671 volume— addresses the issue in his 1613 commentary on I Corinthians, for instance, he speaks directly to the danger of mixing things sacred and profane. Recognizing how appropriate the maxim is to the textual problem itself, Pareus begins with a reading of the adage that enables him to explain its presence in Scripture: For as taint of disease easily seizes and destroys heedless men, so does the disease of pleasure easily prevail and corrupt those who are not evil, who do not studiously avoid the conversation and fellowship of the depraved. Paul brings forth a sentence from the antique poet Menander, from a common adage familiar at that time: Φθείρ[ου]σιν ἤθη χρῆσθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί, or “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” What is said concerning communications can also be said with regard to habits, readings, disputations, etc. For just as he who handles tar stains his hands, so too does he who takes pleasure in traffic or communications with the depraved thenceforth draw in vice. Indeed, if we can keep such company, we can avoid the same. Communications and habits of both kinds have a provocative force. Good things yield good, evil yields evil. Thus Menander’s verse is rightly reversed: Φθείρ[ου]σιν ἤθη χρηστῶν ὁμιλίαι κακαί [sic], or “Holy communications correct evil manners.” When Paul said “Be not deceived” he readily intimated that they who are delighted by profane speeches and debates might be led astray. At different times the apostle takes phrases from profane poets, as in Acts 14 and Titus 1. Thus he was by no means lacking in humanistic letters, and it is understood that the humanistic studies are not unsuitable for theologians, provided that they are subservient to theology, not rule it. For as the Israelites consecrated the vessels of the Egyptians in the desert, so we ought to consider the moral instruction, natural philosophy, and the entire philosophy of the philosophers and poets for salutary uses of the church. It is not approved, however, to tarry too long with the profane studies, until we are defiled ourselves, and no learning might be considered, except things profane.26 24  Testamenti Veteris Biblia Sacra [1590], 341. 25  Erasmus [1603], 425. 26  Pareus [1613], 1032–3: Sicut enim pestis contagium facilime corripit & perdit incautos: sic pestis voluptatum facile serpit & inficit etiam non malos, qui consortia & colloquia pravorum studiose non caverint. Sententiam profert ex Menandro poëta vestusto, tunc vulgo tritam proverbio: Φθείρ[ου]σιν ἤθη χρῆσθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί. Colloquia prava corrumpunt mores bonos. Quod de colloquiis dicitur, etiam de moribus, lectionibus, disputationibus &c. dici potest. Ut enim, qui picem

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It bears saying here that Pareus’ comments on I Corinthians are antithetical to his claims concerning the dramatic form of the Apocalypse, the subject of Chapter 1. In his commentary on Revelation, Pareus suggested that John received his visions at Patmos in their present dramatic form, intimating that God himself delivered the Revelation as a tragedy and that there is nothing derivative about this most holy poetry. Pareus methodically avoids references to antique tragedy and never treats the tragedy of Revelation as an appropriated form. In that case there is no need for the sanctification of an otherwise profane tragic idiom; as Revelation proceeds directly from God as a tragedy, Pareus bypasses the archive of Greek and Roman tragedy entirely in his treatment of Scripture. Here, however, Pareus is faced with a different problem—that is, Paul’s appropriation of profane poetry in his letter to the Corinthians. Pareus insists that the adage was “common,” “familiar at that time,” subtly intimating that Paul was less conversant with New Comedy than he was eager to accommodate his address to the tastes and habits of the Corinthians, for whom this choice quotation was a commonplace. Moreover, while other commentaries emphasize the power of corruption, Pareus offers an inventive alternative whereby evil manners are at once destroyed and elevated (or sublimated) through saintly conversation: “Holy communications correct evil manners.” His brief commentary turns on this hinge, as he proceeds to demonstrate how the profane arts and sciences are readily and piously appropriated by the faithful, just as the Israelites appropriated the vessels of the Egyptians and put them to new use.27 Pareus thus invokes the spoils of Egypt, profane but nonetheless useful to the Israelites in their sojourn through the desert. This is what Paul does to profane poetry, which is corrected (if not sanctified) as the Apostle mingles colloquial verse with revelation. Early modern readers after Erasmus generally accepted Menander as Paul’s source, if not directly then indirectly, as a common proverb detached from its comic origins but nevertheless originating with Menander. Moreover, scholars like Pareus cited I Corinthians 15:33 in order to argue the utility of classical poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy, albeit within limits—that is, “provided that they are subservient to theology.” This is the import of Paul’s citation and is, again, distinct from Pareus’ treatment of dramatic form in Revelation. But if Milton was familiar with this tradition of scholarship it nevertheless bears little influence on the 1671 poems. Jesus takes a decidedly different approach to heathen erudition in Paradise contrectat, inquinat manus: ita, qui pravorum gaudet commercio vel colloquiis, vitium inde contrahit. Cum qualibus enim conversamur: tales ipsi evadimus. Colloquia & mores in utramque partem incentivam vim habent. Boni bonos, mali malos reddunt. Recte igitur senarius Menandri in contrarium vertitur: Φθείρ[ου]σιν ἤθη χρησῶν ὁμιλίαι κακαί [sic]. Colloquia sancta corrigunt mores malos. Cum dicit: ne erretis: innuit facile seduce posse eos, qui profanes disputationibus & sermonibus delectantur. Aliquoties apostolus ex poëtis profanis sententias mutuatur: ut Act. 14. Tit. 1. Unde eum literaturae humanioris minime expertem fuisse, & studia humaniora non dedecere theologos intelligitur, modo theologiae ancillentur, non dominentur. Ut enim Israelitae Aegyptiorum vasa in deserto consecrabant Deo: ita nos philosophorum & poetarum doctrinam ethicam, physicam, totamque philosophiam, ad salutares ecclesiae usus conferre debemus. Non probatur interim, ita immorari studiis profanes: donec ipsi profanescamus: & nulla eruditio putetur, nisi profana. 27  See Augustine [1997], 64–5; Eden [2001], 8–32.



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Regain’d, much closer to the Pareus of Revelation than the Pareus of I Corinthians. Moreover, in the preface to Samson Agonistes, a few choice references to Christian writers (including Paul, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Pareus) seem matter enough to justify the utility of tragedy. Here Milton presents the Poetics and antique tragedy as exegetical resources, but on their own terms, without explicitly harmonizing sacred and secular forms and strategies; he merely attempts to “vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common Interludes.”28 There is no explicit argument for Christian appropriation in Paradise Regain’d . . . To which is added Samson Agonistes.29 He does not follow the gist of the exegetical tradition outlined above. Despite the prevailing critical consensus circa 1671, moreover, Milton tellingly attributes the adage to Euripides.30 But Milton’s untimely insistence on Euripides’ authority is illuminating, enabling us to reconstitute his tragic archive and to understand Jesus’ response to Satan as well as its relation to the note preceding Samson Agonistes. Milton’s contemporaries identified Menander as the source of the adage, but both Clement of Alexandria and Socrates of Constantinople affirm its tragic origins. In Book I of the Stromateis, a second-century work that Milton cites in his commonplace book, Clement of Alexandria claims that Paul “makes use of a tragic iambic verse” [ιαμβείῳ συγκέχρηται τραγικῷ]; here at I Corinthians 15:33, as elsewhere (“for this is not the only instance”), Paul “grants a measure of truth to the prophets of the Greeks, and is not ashamed, in a discussion designed for the edification of some and the shaming of others, to make use of Greek poems.”31 While Clement’s early modern editors Sylburgius and Heinsius attribute the adage to Menander, Clement himself calls the fragment “tragic.” Moreover, in his continuation of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History, the fifth-century church historian Socrates of 28  M1671, 67. 29  There is little evidence, in fact, that Milton ever read Pareus’ work closely. In the preface to Samson Agonistes Milton points explicitly to Pareus’ inventive commentary on Revelation, and offers an efficient summary of the work—but even here it is difficult to tell how closely Milton actually read the work or whether he approved of Pareus’ idiosyncratic description of tragedy. For instance, Pareus claims that, “Tragedians tend to mingle things incidental with the works [πάρεργα τοῖς ἔργοις], things sportive with things serious [ludicra seriis], at times for the sake of preparation, at other times for the sake of delight”—a tragic custom that abides, he claims, in John’s “Prophetic Drama,” the book of Revelation. This informs his notion of “Dramaticall decorum,” so crucial to the project of the In Divinam Apocalypsin . . . Commentarius insofar as Pareus uses these principles of decorum to distinguish between tragic frame and prophetic content. Pareus seems to draw from earlier humanist tragedies depicting Christ’s execution—for instance, Bartolomaeus’ Christus Xilonicus—which do indeed mingle characters and traditions in ways anathema to the Poetics. In this sense, however, Pareus’ Revelation ranks among those “common Interludes” which express “the Poets error of intermixing Comic stuff with Tragic sadness and gravity.” Despite his signal references to Pareus’ commentary on Revelation, Milton does not seem to share his vision of tragedy. See M1671, 66–7; P1622, 24–37; P1644, 19–32. 30  Milton’s contemporary, the nonconformist minister John Owen, also attributes the maxim to Euripides in a manner that evinces familiarity with the relevant textual scholarship. In a detailed treatment of canonical authority in Scripture, Owen recounts how Paul’s citations posed a problem for Patristic readers, for “even as St. Paul cited an Iambick out of Menander, or rather Euripides I Cor. 15.33. an hemistichium out of Aratus, Acts 17.28. and a whole Hexameter out of Epimenides, Tit. 1.12. non sunt canonici sed leguntur Cathechumenis (saith Athanasius) They are not Canonical, but are only read to the Catechumeni.” Owen’s definition of canonical authority admits these texts into canon. See Owen [1668], 3–4. 31  CA, 219; CS, 66–7 [I alter the translation]; and Milton, “Milton’s Commonplace Book” [1938].

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Constantinople (often called “Socrates Scholasticus”) attributed the verse to Euripides by name.32 In order to show that “the Apostle did not only not forbid the knowledge of the heathenish Doctrines, but is seen not to have despised them himself,” Socrates points to his use of the adage “Evil words corrupt good manners [again, ῾Φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρηστὰ ὁμιλίαι κακαί] [which] sheweth plainly, that he was well seen in the Tragedies of Euripides [τῶν Εὐριπίδου δραμάτων].”33 Despite prevailing consensus, Milton follows Clement and Socrates, identifying Paul’s tragic source and, in the process, retracing their detailed arguments concerning Greek erudition and Christian piety. In Paradise Regain’d Milton’s Jesus does not rehearse the Augustinian justification for the use of heathen works, the argument that Pareus employs to explain Paul’s quotation in I Corinthians 15:33. Greek erudition is not, as Augustine attests in De Doctrina Christiana, “Like the treasures of the ancient Egyptians . . . which on leaving Egypt the people of Israel, in order to make better use of them, surreptitiously claimed for themselves.”34 Jesus does not merely intimate that the arts of the Greeks “which happen to be true and consistent with our faith [si qua forte vera et fidei nostrae accommodata] should not cause alarm, but be claimed for our own use, as it were from owners who have no right to them.”35 Rather, Milton’s Jesus follows Clement and Socrates insofar as he locates Greek erudition directly in relation to Hebrew arts and sciences. FA I T H , S T U D Y, A N D G R E E K E RU D I T I O N Socrates of Constantinople invokes Paul’s Euripides in Book III of the Ecclesiastical History, in his account of the efforts of the Emperor Julian (known to posterity as Julian the Apostate) to restore the glory and virtue of pagan Rome against an ascendant Christianity.36 During his relatively short reign (from November 361 to June 363) Julian worked systematically to deprive Christians of power and influence.37 In June 362 he issued an edict regarding teaching, explicitly mandating that “School teachers and professors ought to be distinguished, first by character and, second, by eloquence”—an equivocal pronouncement that effectively discounted Christians from the study of “the liberal sciences” and the entirety of

32  Milton read Socrates of Constantinople’s account of Church history in the 1612 Geneva edition of the Historiae Ecclesiasticae Scriptores Graeci; reprinting the 1544 Greek editio princeps as well as a parallel Latin translation, this edition also included Church histories by Eusebius, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evagrius. See Nicholas [1952], 160–2; and Socrates of Constantinople [1612]. 33  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 306–7; [2005], 314–17 [III.xvi.26]. Note that Socrates does not reproduce the same version of the fragment as do Clement, Erasmus, or any of Menander’s early modern editors: in the Ecclesiastical History, the phrase does not include an apostrophe and is thus technically not a senarius, a verse of six iambic feet. 34  Augustine [1997], 64–5; and [1865], 63. 35  Augustine [1997], 64; and [1865], 63. 36  As William Poole demonstrates, Milton was eminently interested in Julian the Apostate; he draws upon Julian’s writing as well as relevant ecclesiastical histories to mount comparisons between the infamous emperor and later tyrants. In Poole’s detailed treatment, “Milton’s Apollinarian vision” emerges in conversation with Julian and his detractors. See Poole [2016]. 37  Bowersock [1978], 82–9.



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“prophane literature.”38 In order to maintain honesty and integrity, Julian stipulated that teachers should not teach works which “they do not think admirable”; teachers were required “to really persuade their pupils that neither Homer nor Hesiod nor any of these writers whom they expound” are guilty of any “impiety, folly, and error.”39 Christian teachers would either have to avoid profane works entirely or declare otherwise objectionable works free of error. Julian recognized the importance of Greek poetry and philosophy to emergent Christian thought and practice, and his effort to regulate interpretation was thus an attempt to halt the intellectual advancement of Christianity. Nowhere is this clearer, Socrates suggests, than in Paul’s own use of profane literature, exemplified at I Corinthians 15:33. While Julian died before the edict could really take effect, Socrates nevertheless meditates on his late decree to affirm the value and relevance of poetry and “the Philosophical Sciences of the Heathens” for Christianity.40 He recalls those “many Heathen Philosophers which were not farre from the knowledge of God,” inspired men who seemed to apprehend divine precepts in nature and who rejected “error and ignorance” even though they “understood not the mystery of Christ, which was concealed the continuance of many ages and generations.”41 Socrates maintains that “the Sciences and Doctrine of the Gentiles” remain crucial to Christians who wish “to attain as well unto a fine stile and eloquent phrase, as the exercise and whetting of the wits.”42 Christians turned to grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and poetry, among other disciplines, to hone their acumen and to express the complex and dynamic experience of faith and witness. Socrates argues that it was crucial for early Christians to dispute rigorously with adversaries as well as among themselves, a task that required technical skill and familiarity with a wide variety of heathen doctrines and disciplines. In this spirit Socrates celebrates the syncretic achievements of the grammarian Apollinaris and his son, the rhetorician Apollinaris of Laodicea, contemporaries of Julian who thrived under adverse conditions—a success that Socrates (and later, Milton) adamantly attributes to “the special providence of Almighty God.”43 Socrates recounts how the elder Apollinaris employed Greek poetry and ­philosophy “unto the furtherance of Christian Religion,” translating the “five Books of Moses” into “Heroical verse” [διὰ τοῦ ἡρωικοῦ λεγομένου μέτρου μετέβαλεν/carmine heroico expressit], adapting prominent Scriptural fabulae into verse (“partly in Hexameter verse, and partly after the form of Comedies and Tragedies, with the fit application of persons”) in order that “Christians should not be ignorant and unskilfull in any rare gift that excelled among the Gentiles.”44 38  Bowersock [1978], 83–4; Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 305. For the text of the prescript itself see Julian [1923], 118–21. 39  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 305; Julian [1923], 116–23. 40  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 306; [2005], 310–13; [1612], 401. 41  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 306; [2005], 312–13; [1612], 401. 42  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 307; [2005], 316–17; [1612], 402. 43  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 305; [2005], 312–13; [1612], 401. See also Milton [1959], 509. 44  This is the same Apollinaris to whom Baronius attributed the Greek Christus patiens, instead of Gregory of Nazianzen. Gregory is nevertheless important in this context, critical as he was of his contemporary Julian the Apostate. Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 305; [2005], 310–11; [1612], 401.

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His son, “an eloquent Rhetorician, brought the writings of the Evangelists, and works of the Apostles into Dialogues, as Plato used among the Heathens.”45 In Milton’s own estimation, the Apollinarii did nothing less than “coin all the seven liberall Sciences out of the Bible, reducing it into divers forms of Orations, Poems, Dialogues, ev’n to the calculating of a new Christian grammar”—a miraculous feat, inspired by and successful despite Julian’s harsh injunctions against Christian learning.46 In Socrates’ account, the Apollinarii faithfully followed Paul’s mandate and example, true to the spirit of I Corinthians 15:33. Insofar as “the Apostle forbad not the knowledge of the Gentiles Doctrines, he gave free licence and liberty unto every man at his choice and pleasure, to wade in the understanding of them” [Οὐκοῦν [τῷ] μὴ κωλύσαι τὰ Ἑλλήνων μανθάνειν τῇ γνώμῃ τῶν βουλομένων κατέλιπον].47 This is precisely what is at stake in Paul’s “Euripidean” citation, evidence that not only was the Apostle familiar with Greek tragedy but also that he employed this archive freely and deliberately to holy ends. At first Socrates’ ancient argument seems similar to the approach that Pareus articulates in his own commentary on I Corinthians, concerning spoils and appropriation. But Socrates actually poses an alternative approach to heathen erudition in the Ecclesiastical History. He foregrounds trial instead of appropriation. According to Socrates, Paul exhorted faithful readers “to wade in the understanding” of the Gentiles; no less an authority than Jesus bid Christians to be “tried exchangers” [Γίνεσθε τραπεζίται δόκιμοι]—that is, “to examine all things, and hold that which is good” [I Thessalonians 5:21].48 Trial is fundamental to the vision of truth and piety articulated in Socrates’ Ecclesiastical History and fundamental to Christian liberty. The Scriptures, “inspired from above,” appeal to faith rather than philosophical argument; they “deliver unto us divine Precepts, and mysticall Doctrine,” they “graffe in the minds of such as hear them true godlinesse, and the right trade of living,” they require study and contemplation—but “they teach us no Logick [οὐ μὴν τέχνην διδάσκουσιν λογικὴν] wherewith we may withstand such as oppugne the truth.”49 Heathen philosophy affords Christian readers the latter skill, and it is only in this limited sense that it is instrumental in the perfection of Christian learning and style. Socrates is clear when he affirms that this trial, this “wading,” never poses a real challenge to the faithful, in whom God and the 45  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 305; [2005], 310–11; [1612], 401. 46  Milton [1959], 508–9. 47  The message is clear in the Marian Bishop John Christopherson’s Latin translation of this passage (first published posthumously in 1569) as well: “Quo circa in eo, quod Apostolus gentilium disciplinas perdiscere non vetuerit, cuiusque iudicio (modo ipse voluerit) eas imbibendi integram liberamque permisit potestatem.” Christopherson’s Latin translations of the ecclesiastical historians, including Socrates of Constantinople, were printed frequently during the seventeenth century and were thus readily available to Milton and his contemporaries. Andrew Marvell, for instance, used Christopherson’s Latin translations to compose both the Short Historical Essay touching General Councils, Creeds, and Imposition in Religion and the Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government. Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 306; [2005], 314–15; [1612], 401; and Patterson [2000], 134–6. 48  The phrase “Γίνεσθε τραπεζίται δόκιμοι,” although foreign to the Gospels, is often attributed to Jesus by the Fathers. Clement of Alexandria, for instance, employs this quote in Book I of the Stromateis. Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 306; [2005], 314–15; [1612], 402; and CS, 152. 49  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 306; [2005], 314–15; [1612], 401–2.



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Scriptures have already “graffe in” [ἐντιθέασιν]—that is, engrafted, implanted, or in Christopherson’s Latin, inserunt—faith and piety.50 At this point in the Ecclesiastical History, Socrates insists that heathen knowledge be used tactically and advantageously; “the adversaries are easiest overthrown when their own weapons are used to their foyle and destruction,” a task Christians cannot accomplish “unlesse we possesse the armour of the enemy, and in enjoying it, not to be affected like unto them, but to reject that which is evil, to retain that which is good, and to admit nothing without good tryal.”51 Milton certainly knew this section of Socrates’ Ecclesiastical History very well, and draws directly from it in Areopagitica. Immediately after he mentions the Apostle Paul, “who thought it no defilement to insert into holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek Poets, and one of them a Tragedian,” Milton invokes the name of “Julian the Apostat, and suttlest enemy to our faith, [who] made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning: for, said he, they wound us with our own weapons, and with our owne arts and sciences they overcome us.”52 Elsewhere Milton is famously dismissive of Patristic judgment but here, apropos of Socrates of Constantinople, he points favorably to those “Primitive Doctors” who “affirm’d it both lawfull and profitable” to traffic in heathen learning.53 And following Socrates, Milton praises the wisdom and diligence of the Apollinarii.54 Like the censorious Interregnum licensers, at risk of translating Roman Inquisitions to England, Julian’s restrictive efforts undermine the liberty and trial that are so fundamental to Miltonic Christianity. While Milton cites Socrates of Constantinople’s fifth-century Ecclesiastical History, he also refers to an earlier work from which Socrates himself seems to draw—namely Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis, a theological miscellany that Clement composed at the beginning of the third century.55 For Socrates, heathen erudition can never challenge faith; it can only confirm faith, by way of trial, and enable the faithful to communicate the truth to unbelievers. Clement shares this approach, and makes an even stronger claim to Greek learning, based on chronology. Book I of Clement’s Stromateis features a detailed articulation of “Christian Hellenism” directly relevant to both Socrates’ account of Julian and Apollinarii as well as his treatment of Greek poetry and philosophy. Socrates and Clement share key references—not only the tragic attribution of the adage in question but also the apocryphal mandate to become “tried exchangers” or “reputable bankers” [Γίνεσθε τραπεζίται δόκιμοι]. Across Book I of the Stromateis, Clement integrates theology and Greek (that is to say, profane) erudition.56 Philosophy, Clement claims, “was to the Greek world what the Law was to the Hebrews, a tutor escorting them to Christ.”57 Where Socrates illustrates how faith and knowledge alike require trial, Clement calls this process “real dialectic” or “practical wisdom” 50  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 306; [2005], 314–15; [1612], 401. 51  Socrates of Constantinople [1663], 306; [2005], 314–15; [1612], 401–2. 52  Milton [1959], 507–9. 53  Milton [1959], 508–9. 54  Milton [1959], 507–9. 55  Urbainczyk [1997], 90–1; Osborn [2005], 23–7. 56  Osborn [2005], 13. 57  CS, 42.

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[φρόνησις or prudentia], stipulating that this “true dialectic is mixed with true philosophy”—that is, Greek philosophy and Christian theology (“true philosophy”) are ideally integrated to assist the faithful.58 A robust faith is one that is confirmed by reason and revelation alike. Nevertheless, on this Clement is clear: “The Savior’s teaching is sufficient without additional help, for it is ‘the power and wisdom of God’ [I Corinthians 1:24]”—a principle that he reiterates in Book I of his Paedogogus, with which Milton was also familiar: “the Word, Reason itself [ὁ λόγος/sermo], has taken upon Himself, as the Educator of little ones [ὁ παιδαγωγὸς/Paedagogus], the task of preventing sins against reason” [τὴν ἀλόγου κώλυσιν ἁμαρτίας/ad prohibendum irrationale peccatum].59 Clement affirms what Socrates implies in the Ecclesiastical History, that “The addition of Greek philosophy does not add more power to the truth; it reduces the power of the sophistic attack on it.”60 In his account of Greek erudition, Clement organizes the national histories of philosophy and the arts chronologically, affirming the unsurpassed pedigree and the deep antiquity of Hebrew knowledge. He offers a comprehensive genealogy of philosophy wherein Hebrew thought pre-dates Greek learning. In fact, among a startling array of traditions—including the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Druids, Gymnosophists, and Buddhists—Hebrew philosophy is the most ancient, “the oldest of any form of wisdom,” including “those they call sages and poets” [[οὐ] μόνον [τῶν] λεγομένων σοφῶν τε [καὶ] ποιητῶν/iis qui dicuntur Sapientes & Poëtae].61 Clement even cites an ancient Jewish tragedy, Ezekiel’s Exagogue, in an attempt to establish chronological details pertaining to Moses’ education, suggesting that the Jews developed tragedy before the Greeks as well.62 With respect to other arts and skills, Clement offers a catalog of discoveries not unlike the humanist Polydore Vergil’s De Inventoribus Rerum (1499); in almost every instance, he attributes the discovery to a non-Greek, the effect of which is to undermine the importance and authority of Greek antiquity. In comparison to the Jews, Greek erudition is not only recent but childish. “So the Egyptian priest’s words in Plato were absolutely splendid,” Clement claims, repurposing a sentence from Plato’s Timaeus: “‘O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children. You have in your souls no ideas from antiquity handed down by tradition. There is not a single old man 58  CS, 152–3; CA, 260. 59  CS, 98; Clement of Alexandria [1954], 6–7; and CA, 60. 60  CS, 98. 61  CS, 75–7, 99, 106; CA, 237. 62  Milton does not mention Ezekiel’s Greek Exagogue, nor do Clement’s early modern editors Syllburgius or Heinsius pay it any particular attention when fragments of the tragedy appear in the Stromateis. But William Poole demonstrates that Milton was clearly familiar with Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica, the major source for the Exagogue in early modernity. According to Ezekiel’s modern editor Howard Jacobson, “all extant fragments” of the Exagogue appear in Book IX, Chapter  28 of the Praeparatio Evangelica. Moreover, Poole effectively shows how Milton turns to Eusebius’ work, on its own and by way of a commentary tradition, when he plots his dramatic itinerary in the Trinity Manuscript; he cites “Euseb. praeparat. evang. l. 9. c. 22”—only a few chapters before Eusebius’ treatment of the Exagogue (by way of Alexander Polyhistor)—when he sketches a tragedy based on Dinah, drawn not from Scripture but from Eusebius’ redaction of “some events of the life of Jacob, as narrated in Greek hexameter verse by the second-century BCE poet Theodotus.” Poole thus offers strong evidence that Milton was familiar with Jewish tragedy in Greek, by way of Church history. See CS, 137–9; CA, 252–3; Jacobson [1983], 36–7; Collins [2000], 224–30; Eusebius of Caesarea [1857], 735–48; and Poole [2013], 65–7.



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among the Greeks.’”63 Clement, in turn, lays claim to Jewish antiquity, what he calls “our tradition,” which both pre-dates and perfects Greek thought and heathen culture at large. Clement’s project, then, is to employ Greek philosophy and poetry to communicate and comprehend revelation. At first sight, heathen erudition seems more powerful than in Socrates of Constantinople’s account, insofar as Christians employ these Greek resources to lead them asymptotically towards truth. But this is only because these resources were not Greek to begin with; rather, Greek knowledge is only a partial and imperfect version of an earlier Hebrew knowledge proper to the people of Scripture. The Stromateis itself is littered with illustrative references to Greek poetry, particularly from Euripides’ tragedies, through which Clement demonstrates how otherwise objectionable poetry serves to guide readers to Christ. Even the Hebrews required guides—hence Clement’s analogy, that philosophy is to the Greeks what the Law was to the Hebrews. Philosophy and the Law alike are propaedeutic, preparing adherents for study in Christ that brings true wisdom, “the scientific understanding of things divine, things human, and their causes.”64 To follow through with this analogy, both the Law and philosophy (together with poetry) afford the faithful reader or student a way to examine themselves and their limits, to learn to seek salvation elsewhere. Study of heathen arts prepares the way to true religion insofar as each contains some fragment of truth with the potential to lead the student to Christ. In his attempt to explain this controversial point—that “all who stretched out towards the truth, Greeks and non-Greeks alike, could be shown to possess some portion of the Word of Truth”—Clement directs readers to Euripides’ Bacchae: The philosophic sects, whether Greek or not, are like the Maenads scattering the limbs of Pentheus, each boasting their own limited claim as the whole truth . . . We could discover that very many of the opinions voiced among the sects (those that have not been rendered totally deafened or cut off from following nature, so they cut off Christ’s head as the pack of women did with [Pentheus]), even if they seem mutually inconsistent, do in fact accord with their own kind and with truth in general . . . If anyone brings together the scattered limbs into a unity, you can be quite sure without risk of error that he will gaze on the Word in his fullness, the Truth.65

Milton tells a similar story, in Areopagitica, replacing Clement’s tragic Pentheus with Plutarch’s Osiris. In Milton’s account, Truth is also dismembered, and they who endeavor to know “continue seeking”; counting himself among the seekers, Milton and company will “continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyr’d Saint”—that is, Truth or Christ.66 In both cases, however, it is nigh impossible for even the most faithful and dutiful student of philosophy, poetry, and the panoply of heathen arts to reconstruct the truth from its fragments. It is certainly impossible for those students who are ignorant of or estranged from Christ.67 63 CS, 154 [my emphasis]; CA, 260–1. Clement quotes and subsequently interprets Plato’s Timaeus. See Plato [1929], 32–3. 64  CS, 43–4. 65  CS, 65. 66  Milton [1959], 549–50. 67  I eschew here the issue of whether or how this is possible for Clement’s Christian Gnostic.

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But the sharp and resourceful Christian student will not neglect the resources of heathen philosophy or poetry. For even Paul “grants a measure of truth to the prophets of the Greeks, and is not ashamed, in a discussion designed for the edification of some and the shaming of others, to make use of Greek poems.”68 Clement’s example: the “tragic iambic verse” Paul employs at I Corinthians 15:33, “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” Sententious verses like this capture the “gnomic brevity” of the philosophy of Moses, “Hebraic and enigmatic.”69 The authority of heathen erudition is illustrated at I Corinthians 15, as Paul uses this citation profitably to admonish the unfaithful and “as an encouragement to pursue true knowledge.”70 Nevertheless, the limits of heathen erudition are evident as well, as Paul preaches here against the wisdom of the world, in favor of Christian folly—that is, a steadfast belief in Christ’s Resurrection and the life of the world to come. Echoing and transforming the adage “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” Paul testifies that where “flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdome of God, neither doeth corruption inherit incorruption” (I Corinthians 15:50). Once again, Paul employs the propaedeutic adage—representative, for both Socrates and Clement, of heathen erudition in general—to admonish and to confirm faith in Christ, but neither the adage alone nor profane knowledge at large is sufficient for salvation. H E B R E W A N T I Q U I T Y I N PA R A D I S E R E G A I N’ D Although he points to knowledge beyond the boundaries of Hebrew erudition, the Satan of Paradise Regain’d does not necessarily validate or extoll Greek literature, history, or philosophy on its own. In fact, he appeals first (in this temptation) to Jesus’ apparent need to share references and languages with the learned of the world, to know “Thir Idolisms, Traditions, Paradoxes” (PR IV.234), in order to accurately refute them. The terms “converse” and “conversation” figure prominently in the initial temptation as Milton recalls the “ὁμιλίαι” of “φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ᾿ ὁμιλίαι κακαί,” which is often rendered “colloquia” but also “consortia,” “commercia,” and, tellingly, “conversatio.”71 “Be famous then/ By wisdom,” he offers an unmoved Jesus: as thy Empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o’re all the world, In knowledge, all things in it comprehend, All knowledge is not couch’t in Moses Law, The Pentateuch or what the Prophets wrote, The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach To admiration, led by Natures light; 68  CA, 219; CS, 66–7 [I alter the translation]. 69  CS, 67 [I alter the translation here]; CA, 219. 70  CS, 67; CA, 219. 71  The adequate translation of “ὁμιλίαι” garners significant attention in many early textual commentaries of Menander and I Corinthians. See Pareus [1613], 1032; and Stephanus [1569], 351–3.



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And with the Gentiles much thou must converse, Ruling them by perswasion as thou mean’st, Without thir learning how wilt thou with them, Or they with thee hold conversation meet?  (PR IV.221–32)

Successful conversation with the Greeks requires fluency in their poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy. Such study, Satan seems to promise, will undoubtedly reveal how these heathens were miraculously (“to admiration”) guided, “led by Nature’s light.” But the temptation rests on Satan’s ability to convince Jesus that “Error by his own arms is best evinc’t” (PR IV.235), a feat that requires conversation or “ὁμιλία” with the Greeks. Jesus refuses Satan, and derides Greek erudition, but simultaneously exhibits an acute understanding of the very arts he rejects. It is thus easy to misread his vehement response, even from the outset: “Think not but that I know these things, or think/ I know them not; not therefore am I short/ Of knowing what I aught” (PR IV.286–8). This initial phrase, albeit in blank verse, makes more sense as a fourteener followed by an alexandrine, both of which defy the meter as well as readerly expectations. Like the response at large, the opening sentences ask us to read the same words in multiple ways. Along with Satan, we are initially confounded by the phrase. It requires rereading, reframing, after which the meaning is startlingly simple. To paraphrase: “Whether or not you believe that I am familiar with these things, I know what I need to know.” In what follows, Jesus is critical of the notion that he must be fluent in the Greek arts. From the outset, he confirms that he knows what he “aught,” and that “he who receives/ Light from above, from the fountain of light,/ No other doctrine needs, though granted true” (PR IV.288–90, my emphasis). That is to say, direct inspiration is sufficient on its own—even if the arts with which Jesus is presented are “granted true.” Jesus proceeds to take Greek philosophy to task, betraying more than a passing familiarity with the Athenian doctrines. The issue at this point is not whether Greek erudition is true or false, but whether it is necessary. These heathen arts are clearly not necessary for salvation, but Jesus’ knowledge of them enables him to refute said doctrines with clarity and purpose. Jesus seems to speak from Socrates of Constantinople’s Ecclesiastical History here in which heathen philosophy serves a pedagogical and polemical purpose. Moreover, Jesus also responds by way of Clement of Alexandria who claims, “The Savior’s teaching is sufficient without additional help.”72 Greek philosophy is not necessary, it “does not add more power to the truth,” but familiarity with Greek erudition, even in its depravity, enables Jesus to mitigate “the power of the sophistic attack on it.”73 At this stage in his argument, Jesus illustrates how knowledge of Greek philosophy is indeed most useful when arguing its own errors and limitations.74 72  CS, 98. 73  CS, 98. 74  That is not to say that Jesus’ faith or authority resides in any detailed knowledge of Scripture. In a sense, the Clementine lessons regarding Hebrew antiquity and fragmentary truth, together with Socrates of Constantinople’s insistence on trial, might also apply to Scripture. In short, there is no compelling reason to assume that Scripture itself is markedly more meaningful than heathen erudition, in Paradise Regain’d.

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As Jesus proceeds through the genealogy of Greek philosophy in particular it is clear that most of the philosophers’ doctrines are both unnecessary and “false, or little else but dreams” (PR IV.291). It is doubtful that he shares Clement’s judgment, that every school is not without some fragment of truth. It is even less likely that Milton approved of the philosophy of Moses in the Stromateis, the highest form of which is a “True dialectic . . . mixed with true philosophy” [μικτῂ δὲ φιλοσοφία [oὖ]σα τῇ ἀληθείᾳ ἡ ἀληθὴς διαλεκτικὴ/ vera dialectica, philosophia permixta veritate], a contemplative faculty that enables students to comprehend the divine, a faculty which Clement collates with the ἐποπτεία achieved at the Eleusinian Mysteries as well as Aristotelian metaphysics.75 Jesus might have numbered this comportment to revelation among the “Conjectures” and “fancies” of the Athenian philosophers, save for its Jewish origins in the Stromateis. Nevertheless, Jesus recognizes an alternative to poetry “from God inspir’d”—that is, a poetry in which “moral virtue is express’t/ By light of Nature not in all quite lost” (PR IV.350–2). Something similar might be said of Greek philosophy insofar as Jesus points to doctrines that are unnecessary, although “granted true.” In this sense, his derisive account of philosophy ultimately echoes Clement’s articulation of the limits of Greek erudition:            Who therefore seeks in these True wisdom, finds her not, or by delusion Far worse, her false resemblance only meets, An empty cloud. However many books Wise men have said are wearisom; who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior (And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek) Uncertain and unsettl’d still remains, Deep verst in books and shallow in himself, Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys, And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge; As Children gathering pibles on the shore.  (PR IV.318–30)

“True wisdom,” Jesus claims, cannot be found in Greek philosophy, nor can it be found in books alone, without “A spirit and judgment equal or superior”— presumably “spirit and judgment” that also proceed “from above, from the fountain of light.” Jesus revisits his claim at IV.288–92 here. Even if these books prove true, they are incidental to true wisdom, for “what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek.” When Jesus invokes “True wisdom” (even negatively, as it is not discovered in  ­heathen philosophy) he employs Clement’s language, albeit in translation. If Clement overstates the privilege of philosophy, even a philosophy best practiced “for the glory and true knowledge of God,” he clearly values wisdom [σοφία] above all else.76 Wisdom holds unequivocal “authority over philosophy” 75  CS, 151–2; CA, 260.

76  CS, 43–4; CA, 208.



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[κυρία . . . ἡ σοφία τῆς φιλοσοφίας/ Est enim Sapientia domina Philosophiae].77 Moreover, Clement articulates a “true wisdom” [ἐπὶ τ[ὴν] ἀληθῆ σοφίαν] that is also “a divine power” [δύναμις θεία/ divina potestas], “a true knowledge of real beings in their real states, possessing perfection, being free from passion of all sorts [παντὸς πάθους ἀπηλλαγμένη/ libera ab omni animi perturbatione]”—a true wisdom that is not efficacious “without the Savior who by the word of God strips from us the ignorance that has swamped the soul’s perception as a result of bad training, and who has given us the best faculty of perception, ‘So that we can truly recognize [γινώσκοιμεν/ recte cognoscamus] both God and man.’ ”78 Like Milton’s Jesus, Clement proceeds from his account of true wisdom to the claim that, in comparison to the Jews, the entirety of Greek erudition, including philosophy and poetry, is of relatively recent origin. When Jesus turns from philosophy to Greek music, proportion, and poetry, he introduces a version of Hebrew antiquity. And while he is not as invested as Clement in chronological or genealogical details, Jesus traffics in these languages when he claims that “Greece from us these Arts deriv’d.” Satan surreptitiously obscures this point when he proceeds locally in his initial description of intellectual life in Athens. Philosophical achievements are associated first with a place: “the Olive Grove of Academe,/ Plato’s retirement,” Aristotle’s “Lyceum,” the “painted Stoa” for which the Stoics are named (PR IV.244–5, 253), underscoring precisely how local or autochthonous these schools are. Satan presents Greek knowledge as inextricable from its soil, a site “native to famous wits” (PR IV.241). Even when Satan offers Jesus the opportunity to study remotely—“These here revolve, or, as thou lik’st, at home” (PR IV.281)—he insists on a fundamental connection between thought and its geographical site, Athens. Invoking the Hebrew prehistory of Greek erudition, Jesus unsettles Satan’s situated depiction of poetry and philosophy. He subtly reminds Satan that, unlike the Greeks of the temptation, the Jews are as yet not bound to any land. “Our Hebrew Songs and Harps in Babylon,/ That pleas’d so well our Victor’s ear” (PR IV.336–7) were written in captivity; nevertheless, those who seek true wisdom in heathen philosophy remain “unsettl’d,” with no promise of return. In comparison to Hebrew erudition, moreover, these Greek arts are young, unproven, and derivative. Jesus recalls the Egyptian’s judgment in Plato’s Timaeus, so integral to the Stromateis—that is, that “Greeks are all children”; where Clement seems intent only to point to the limits of Greek erudition and to illuminate the antiquity of Hebrew learning, Jesus admonishes Satan’s Athenians as “Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,/ And trifles for choice matters.”79 In their vain search for true wisdom they infantilize themselves, acting “As Children gathering pibles on the shore.” Thus Jesus undermines Satan and upsets the primacy and dignity of Greek learning, but not in a way that renders philosophy or poetry without value. 77  CS, 43–4; CA, 208. 78  The latter section of this quote is itself from the Iliad, although this is not immediately apparent in the early modern edition I use here. CS, 152–3 [I alter the translation here]; CA, 260. 79  CS, 154 [my emphasis]; CA, 260–1.

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Greek learning is useful in refuting heathen claims to knowledge and authority. Moreover, as Jesus points to the Hebrew origins of Greek arts and sciences, he also argues their further utility, beyond controversy and refutation. Athens and Jerusalem share a history and an archive; recognizing the Jewish provenance of Greek art and philosophy, Jesus lays claim to the latter—the principle upon which Milton grounds the preface to Samson Agonistes. Granted, true wisdom is found only in revelation, and not in profane books—but these same books might yet offer some degree of knowledge if the reader brings “A spirit and judgment equal or superior.” This is an important detail, like “though granted true” at IV.290. This judgment might indeed include familiarity with the Hebrew provenance of art and philosophy at large, a fact that shifts the coordinates of authority and propriety from Athens to the wilderness of Judea. Jesus effectively articulates a relationship to heathen knowledge that bears traces of Socrates of Constantinople’s Ecclesiastical History, with reference to the antiquity and discovery of Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis, but without endorsing the gnostic horizon or Platonic range of the latter work. In this sense, Jesus lays the groundwork for Milton’s later preface to Samson Agonistes in his response to Satan, even as he seems to reject Attic tragedy and its philosophical ambit. T R A G E D Y, “ I L L I M I TAT E D ” Milton’s idiosyncratic reference to Paul’s Euripides points us to Socrates of Constantinople and Clement of Alexandria, both of whom inform Jesus’ response to Satan in Book IV of Paradise Regain’d. Jesus excoriates Attic tragedy in an idiom that seems distinct from the later preface to Samson Agonistes. But they are in fact related treatments of tragedy, in dynamic tension. Jesus lays bare the genealogies of heathen poetry. In Paradise Regain’d Milton’s Jesus foregrounds the problems, limits, and temptations of tragedy, a historical form that he deliberately situates in relation to philosophy, rhetoric, and proportion—none of which yield true wisdom. But Jesus also skillfully harmonizes a moral language with the critical language that sets Samson Agonistes to work. Attic tragedy, he claims, is “Ill imitated,” a terse account that immediately follows the Clementine discovery that “Greece from us these Arts deriv’d.” Milton subtly suggests that we read these verbs “deriv’d” and “imitated” in succession, that the Greeks have not merely appropriated a Hebrew art of poetry but also they are unable to retain its dignity or effect. The “Ill” in “ill imitated” works as an adverb; Greek tragedy is Hebrew poetry imperfectly, inexpertly, or not well-imitated. However, the two statements are separated by a semicolon, which also suggests a stronger reading where “ill” is a noun, where “Ill imitated” refers to the mimetic representation (i.e. the imitation) of evil or wicked matters. Here Jesus looks forward to the truncated definition of tragedy adorning the title page of Samson Agonistes where Milton explicitly renders the “μίμησις” of Aristotle’s Poetics as the Latin “imitatio.”80 The tragedy of the Greeks is an imitation 80  M1671, 65; AP, 46–7.



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of depraved actions and affects, ill matter, only edifying “where moral virtue is express’t” per accidens “By light of Nature not in all quite lost.” With Aristotle in mind, “Ill imitated” takes on yet another meaning, where “Ill” is an adverb that refers to the skill of the actors or “πράττοντες” who “render” [ποιοῦνται] the mimesis.81 While “personating/ Thir Gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame” these unskilled actors “loudest sing/ The vices of thir Deities,” recalling the bombastic performances of tragedy ancient and modern, trafficking in vice and spectacle as opposed to more skillful and appropriate forms of mimesis. Jesus recalls Satan’s “chosen band/ Of Spirits likest himself in guile” who accompany their proctor like a travelling company of actors, ready “at his beck [to] appear,/ If cause were to unfold some active Scene/ Of various persons each to know his part” (PR II.236–40). Finally, the reference to imitation or mimesis underscores yet again Clement of Alexandria’s claim regarding the derivation of Greek learning. In Aristotle’s Poetics, it is an “instinct of human beings from childhood, to engage in mimesis.”82 As Aristotle associates mimesis with childhood, the “imitated” of “Ill imitated” rephrases Jesus’ Clementine invective for an audience familiar with the Poetics. The Greeks are yet again “As Children gathering pibles on the shore.” Jesus does not roundly dismiss tragedy but rather evinces a detailed knowledge of poetry and poetics in order to expose their limits. In this sense, the exchange between Satan and Jesus on Greek erudition, particularly their comments on tragedy, serves as a prolegomenon to the more familiar treatment of antique form and faith in Samson Agonistes. K AT H A R S I S B E F O R E A R I S TOT L E As Jesus wrests tragedy from Athens, relocating the origins of poetry and philosophy alike to Hebrew antiquity, so too does he lay claim to katharsis in Paradise Regain’d. Drawing upon detailed investigations of the rites of purification and initiation in antiquity, Milton expands the tragic archive beyond Aristotle’s familiar account of katharsis. Of course, Milton’s interpretation of katharsis has long been the subject of debate, particularly since Jacob Bernays included Samson Agonistes in his account of the purgation theory of katharsis in his seminal 1857 Outline of Aristotle’s Lost Treatise on the Effect of Tragedy [Grundzüge der verloren Abhandlung des Aristoteles über Wirkung der Tragödie].83 Milton’s brief treatment of the Poetics, in other words, is often recited to support the notion that tragedy relieves the audience of excess fear and pity in a manner akin to a medical purgation. Just as “in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us’d against melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours,” Milton claims, so too does tragedy offer a remedial solution to disorderly passions, “raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions.”84 In this vein, Milton’s is arguably the first English 81  AP, 48–9. 82  AP, 36–7. 83  See Bernays [1880], 94–5; Golden [1973], 473–9; and Sellin [1961], 712–30. 84  M1671, 66.

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expression of the Bishop of Urgento Antonio Sebastiano Minturno’s thesis in De Poeta (1559), that tragedy effects purgation by homeopathic means, exposing the afflicted to violent affects which are subsequently voided, “as if they were purged by some potion” [si aliqua potione purgarentur].85 Aristotle does indeed invite this interpretation of katharsis, particularly in Book 8 of the Politics, in his robust account of music and its impact on the passions—not only “pity and fear” [ἔλεος καὶ φόβος] but also “religious excitement” [ἐνθουσιασμός].86 Although they occur “with different degrees of intensity,” these affects are common to all men. When those who are under the throes of such passions are exposed to “tunes that violently arouse the soul,” he affirms, they are “thrown into a state as if they had received medicinal treatment and taken a purge [καθάρσεως].”87 Even those who are subject to more moderate passions, however, enjoy “a pleasant feeling of relief ” upon experiencing katharsis (which Dionysius Lambinus renders as both lustratio and expiatio in his influential translation of the Politics).88 Robortello and Vettori alike collate this section of the Politics with the Poetics to mark Aristotle’s deliberate departure from his master Plato, emphasizing the purgative interpretation of katharsis in the process.89 Bernays and company are thus not wrong when they suggest that Milton was familiar with the purgation theory and that the preface to Samson Agonistes traffics in these terms, so crucial to early modern interpretations of the Poetics. But katharsis means so much more than purgation across the 1671 poems as Milton challenges readers to consider different genealogies of tragic katharsis in order to make sense of Aristotle’s Poetics.90 The Poetics is a signal reference in the 1671 volume, as Samson Agonistes ostensibly begins with Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, a reference given (in an abbreviated version) in both Greek and Latin on the second title page of the 1671 poems: Aristot. Poet. Cap. 6. Τραγωδία μίμησις πράξεως σπ[ου]δαίας, &c. Tragoedia est imitatio actionis seriae, &c. Per misericordiam & metum perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem.91

In English: “Tragedy is the imitation of a serious action, etc. achieving the purification of like affects through pity and fear.” Milton develops this definition in the first sentence of the preface, claiming there that tragedy is “said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like 85  While Minturno is generally considered the first commentator to articulate the purgation theory of katharsis, scholars have largely neglected Giorgio Valla’s contributions to the thesis. Valla, who rendered Aristotle’s note on katharsis as “de miseratione & pavore terminans talium disciplinarum purgationem,” also wrote a treatise on medical purgation in which he delivered detailed theses on remedial practices ancient and modern. Minturno [1559], 64; Valla [1515], 3r; and Valla [1528], F5r–F5v, M3v–M4r. 86  Aristotle [1932], 670–1 [1342a.5–8]. 87  Aristotle [1932], 670–1. 88  Vettori renders katharsis as purgatio on the same page. Aristotle [1932], 670–1; [1582], 593. 89  Aristotle [1582], 596–7; Vettori [1967], 55–6; and Robortello [1968], 53–4. 90  My aim here is to sharpen my earlier comments on katharsis and tragedy in Leo [2011]. 91  M1671, 65.



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passions, that is to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirr’d up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated.”92 But when he translates the Greek katharsis as lustratio, distinct from the most prominent commentaries and translations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Milton connects Aristotle’s process to a broad array of antique ceremonies involving ritual purification and sacrifice.93 As Jason  P.  Rosenblatt argues to great effect in Renaissance England’s Chief Rabbi: John Selden (2006), lustratio evokes both “pagan and Hebraic lives of abstinence and purification,” elucidating the many “continuities among the classical, the Hebraic, and the Christian.”94 In the Oxford Classical Dictionary, for instance, Jerzy Linderski provides an authoritative contextual definition of lustratio as “the performance (lustrare) of lustrum (lustrum facere), a ceremony of purification and of averting evil” where the “main ritual ingredient was a circular procession (circumambulatio, circumagere, often repeated three times)”—a ritual including an offering where, in many cases, the “victims were sacrificed at the end of the ceremony, and their entrails, exta, inspected.”95 Moreover, the ceremony “excluded evil, and kept the pure within the circle, but it also denoted a new beginning, especially for the Roman people at the census or for an army when a new commander arrived or when two armies were joined together.”96 In this sense, lustratio is directly related to the Latin lustricus, a day when ritual purification is performed on a child—in other words, baptism. Tellingly, Milton uses the term in precisely this way in Book I, Chapter 28 of De Doctrina Christiana, as he addresses the relationship between John’s baptism of Jesus and his disciples and Christ’s later baptism of all nations, distinguishing sacramental baptism from other forms of ritual, purification, and purgation. Was John’s baptism—which Jesus himself 92  M1671, 66. 93  For Aristotle’s “τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν” [1449b.27–8], Paccius gives “perturbationes huiusmodi purgans”; Robortello, “perturbationes huiusmodi purgans”; Vettori, “huiuscemodi perturbationum purgationem”; and Heinsius, “similium perturbationum expiationem.” Among these translations, Milton’s is closest to Heinsius’ insofar as “expiatio” often involves some sense of sacrifice, although not necessarily. Notably, in his 1623 edition of the Poetics—the first edition printed in England—Theodore Goulston translates this as “vehementes animorum Perturbationes undiquaque Purgans. expiansque,” with the marginal notation “Finis externus Tragici: Animor. lustratio.” See Aristotle [1537], 20; Robortello [1968], 52–3; Vettori [1967], 54–5; DTC, 247; Aristotle [1623], 12. 94  Indeed, Rosenblatt’s study of Samson Agonistes is crucial here (“Samson’s Sacrifice”), particularly as he brings together relevant Hebrew sources on expiation and sacrifice. Rosenblatt [2006], 108, 93–111. 95  Lewis and Short, for instance, define lustratio as “a purification by sacrifice, a lustration”; the editors of the Oxford Latin Dictionary, as both a “Ritual Cleansing, lustration” and the ceremonial “action of going round or traversing,” related to the verb lustrō, “to purify ceremonially (with cathartic or apotropaic rites)” as well as “to move round,” “traverse,” “to surround,” “to spread light over or around,” and “to look around for, or seek.” See Lewis and Short [1879], 1087 [lustratio]; Glare [1968], 1052 [lustrātiō, lustrō]; and Jerzy Linderski, “lustration,” in Hornblower and Spawforth [2003], 893. 96  Such a rite is famously depicted on Trajan’s Column—a work that Milton may have seen in Rome and which certainly figured prominently in the language of praise during the mid-seventeenth century. Andrew Marvell, in a letter dated June 2, 1654, famously referred to Milton’s Defensio Secunda as “a Trajan’s column, on whose winding ascent we see embossed the several monuments of your learned victories.” Marvell promised to “study it even to the getting it by heart.” See Hornblower and Spawforth [2003], 893; and Symmons [1822], 336. See also Masson [1877], 624–6; and Smith [2010], 123–7.

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received—efficacious? Milton answers affirmatively, claiming that John’s baptism of Jesus “was essentially the same as Christ’s.”97 In both cases, Milton avers, baptism involves both water and the Holy Spirit. But Christ alone confers “the gifts of the spirit almost instantly.”98 Thus only those baptized in Christ receive both water and the Holy Spirit simultaneously.99 When John washed Jesus in the Jordan, however, the ceremony—which Milton calls “a sort of initiation or purification” [lustratio]—could not yet have this same Christic meaning. Instead, John initiated Jesus and the disciples “somewhat obscurely into a Christ not yet sufficiently revealed.”100 Eventually, Milton insists, Christ would render John’s “baptism” of Jesus and the Apostles effective through his death and resurrection; in this sense, John’s baptism is “essentially” the same as Christ’s. Milton’s intention here is to show that neither Jesus nor the Apostles need to be baptized again. But as John “conferred the spirit either not wholly or not at once,” his baptism was only an initiatory ritual on its own, a lustratio, which Christ would later fulfill.101 John’s baptism of Jesus, Milton affirms, “seems to have been promulgated as a sort of initiation or purification [initiatio quaedam sive lustratio],” intended to prepare Jesus “for receiving the gospel’s teaching [ad doctrinam evangelii recipiendam], in accordance with the ancient Hebrew custom by which all proselytes were baptized.”102 This account of lustratio in De Doctrina Christiana is directly pertinent to the 1671 volume. Milton is preoccupied with John’s baptism of Jesus—that is, Jesus’ lustratio—in Paradise Regain’d, revisiting the scene at the Jordan many times across its four books. Both Jesus and Satan describe John’s work as preparatory. Satan, for instance, reiterates Milton’s own claim in De Doctrina Christiana as he describes how John “in the Consecrated stream/ Pretends to wash off sin, and fit them so/ Purified to receive him pure, or rather/ To do him honour as their King” (PR I.72–5, my emphasis). John’s is a preparatory or initiatory gesture and Satan is not wrong when he claims that John “Pretends to wash off sin.” Neither he nor the rite have this power. It is Satan, moreover, who recognizes that Jesus “himself among them was baptiz’d,/ Not thence to be more pure, but to receive/ The testimony of Heaven” (PR I.76–8). And while Jesus insists that “I as all others to his Baptism came,/ Which I believ’d was from above” (PR I.273–4, my emphasis), as if he were but one of the many gathered on the banks of the Jordan to receive the

97  DDC, 744–5 [my emphasis].    98  DDC, 744–5. 99  This is the most familiar notion of baptism—indeed, Milton properly calls this “baptismus”: “Under the gospel,” he affirms, it is “the first sacrament commonly so called, wherein the bodies of those who believe and who give assurance of purity of life [puritatem vitae] are immersed in running water so as to signify our regeneration through the holy spirit, [and] also our merging with Christ through his death, burial, and resurrection.” DDC, 732–3. 100  DDC, 744–5. 101  Without Christ’s fulfilment, John’s “baptism” would never truly be sacramental. Through sacraments God seals his covenant with the faithful and on this Milton (following Paul) is clear: “the spirit alone seals [Spiritus enim solus obsignat], I Cor. 12: 13.” DDC, 744–5. 102  DDC, 744–5.



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rite from John, he soon recognizes his exceptional status.103 Indeed, Jesus, Satan, John, and the “new-baptiz’d” Apostles (PR II.1) all bear witness that: on him baptiz’d Heaven open’d, and in likeness of a Dove The Spirit descended, while the Fathers voice From Heav’n pronounc’d him his beloved Son.  (PR I.29–32)

Although the Father’s declaration coincides with Jesus’ lustratio, Milton certainly does not confirm that the Father speaks to him, or that the Holy Spirit descends upon him, because of John’s baptism. In this case, as an act of purification or purgation the lustratio is not necessary. It is nonetheless initiatory, like many purification rites among the Hebrews in antiquity, and for Jesus it marks the culmination of his adolescent investigations concerning his identity. Like Oedipus in reverse Jesus marshals this knowledge of himself and his paternity to overthrow the sphinx Satan. The lustratio, however, is not incidental to this knowledge; it marks, rather, a ceremonial and legal distinction, looking forward to Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. In De Doctrina Christiana, Milton compares John’s baptism of Jesus to similar practices among Jewish proselytes. His likely source: John Selden, who broached this topic in the 1636 edition of his De Successionibus in Bona Defuncti ad Leges Ebraeorum. Selden introduces proselytes as converts to Judaism, the “regenerate” or “born again,” their change marked by circumcision or baptism, key rites of initiation that set them apart from their former lives as Gentiles.104 In a brief comparative account, surveying various rites of katharsis, katharmos, expiatio, and lustratio, Selden illustrates how “baptism or purification involving a bath” [Baptismum seu lavacri lustrationem] was a common initiatory practice in antiquity.105 He generally reserves “baptismum” for his description of proselytes; “expiatio” and “lustratio” refer here to profane initiatory rites. This distinction is even more pronounced in his later work De Iure Naturali & Gentium, Iuxta Disciplinam Ebraeroum (1640) in which Selden describes proselyte baptism or initiation in great detail but reserves the term lustratio for his treatment of human sacrifice, crucial to his review of Jephtha’s vow—a topic most relevant to Reformation tragedy after Buchanan.106 In this sense Selden affords Milton a comparative approach to baptism before John the Baptist and an archive that reaches back to Hebrew antiquity, enabling him to distinguish among a wide array of sacrificial practices, many of which resemble the Roman lustratio.

103  For any other man or woman, lustratio prepares them to receive the gospel, through which a covenant with God is sealed by grace. For Jesus alone, however, lustratio prepares him to receive himself in the gospels. In this sense, Jesus realizes that the lustratio which he initially “believ’d was from above” is already fulfilled in him. John (whom Jesus claims not to know) identifies Jesus as the Messiah, a fact that is immediately confirmed by heaven. The time “Now full, that I no more should live obscure” (PR, I.287), Jesus emerges from the “laving stream” (PR, I.28) and is hence led “by some strong motion” (PR, I.290) into the Judean wilderness. 104  Selden [1636], 93; Toomer [2009], 468–9. 105  Selden [1636], 97–8. 106  Selden [1640], 141–51, 535–6.

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The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria’s detailed accounts of sacrificial rites involving katharsis, for instance, lay bare the continuities between profane ceremonies and rites of purification required by the law. Of particular relevance to Samson Agonistes, Philo discusses katharsis in his treatment of the “Great Vow” [εὐχὴ μεγάλη/ votum magnum]—that is, the vow taken by Nazarites, described in Numbers 6—whereby Nazarites “dedicate and consecrate themselves [αὑτοὺς ἀνατιθέασι καὶ καθιεροῦσιν/ seipsum dedicat], thus showing an amazing sanctification and a surpassing devotion to God,” one’s self being “the greatest possession anyone has.”107 Philo stipulates, moreover, that those offering a sacrifice or administering a rite must be “pure [καθαρὸν] in body and soul,” subject to “purifications” [κάθαρσιν/ lustrationes] that free the soul from “passions and distempers and infirmities and every viciousness of word and deed, the body of the defilements which commonly beset it.”108 Philo’s early modern translators Adrianus Turnebus and David Hoeschelius render katharsis here as lustratio, emphasizing the deep history of rites of purification, sacred and profane, on which Philo draws. Indeed, Philo describes lustrationes practiced by Moses, rites of great philosophical meaning and import: Moses first provided ashes, the remnants of the sacred fire . . . Some of these, he says, are to be taken and thrown into a vessel and afterwards have water poured upon them. Then the priests are to dip branches of hyssop in the mixture and sprinkle with it those who are being purged [καθαιρομένοις/ lustrandos]. The reason for this may be aptly stated as follows. Moses would have those who come to serve Him that is first know themselves [γνῶναι . . . ἑαυτοὺς/ seipsos noscant] and of what substance these selves are made. For how should he who has no knowledge of himself be able to apprehend the power of God which is above all and transcends all? Now the substance of which our body consists is earth and water, and of this he reminds us in the rite of purging [καθάρσεως/ purificatione]. For he holds that the most profitable form of purification [κάθαρσιν/ purgandum] is just this, that a man should know himself and the nature of the elements of which he is composed, ashes and water, so little worthy of esteem. For if he recognizes this, he will straightway turn away from the insidious enemy, selfconceit, and abasing his pride become well-pleasing to God and claim the aid of His gracious power Who hates arrogance . . . So then, whilst they are being thus sprinkled, deeply moved and roused as they are, they can almost hear the voice of the elements themselves, earth and water, say plainly to them, “We are the substance of which your body consists: we it is whom nature blended and with divine craftsmanship made into the shape of human form. Out of us you were framed when you came into being and into us you will be resolved again when you have to die. For nothing is so made as to disappear into non-existence. Whence it came in the beginning, thither will it return in the end.”109

Depicting lustration as a Mosaic practice, Philo illustrates how the Nazarite, purified through kathartic rites, is prepared to offer sacrifices—the “burnt-offering,” 107  Philo of Alexandria, “De victimis” [1613], 654; [1937], 242–3, 244–5. 108  Philo of Alexandria, “De victimas offerentibus” [1613], 656; [1937], 248–9. 109  Philo of Alexandria, “De victimas offerentibus” [1613], 656–7; [1937], 250–5.



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for instance: the ὁλόκαυτος, holocautus, or “Holocaust” (SA, 1692) to which the Chorus refers in Samson Agonistes when they compare the fallen champion to a phoenix.110 Philo’s katharsis, moreover, long pre-dates the Poetics and involves a symbolic yet rational process by which men are freed from excessive passions and vanities and directed to God. Clement of Alexandria, for whom Philo is an important source, also illustrates how kathartic rites communicate fundamental aspects of Mosaic philosophy and theology (insofar as these are discrete sciences for Clement). Immediately after he cites Paul’s tragic fragment “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” for instance, he follows Philo and identifies the Greek adage “Know yourself ” as Mosaic, its “gnomic brevity” evidence of “the Hebraic and allusive nature” of first philosophy.111 Homer and Pythagoras, among so many other Greek luminaries, all recognize their debts to foreigners—debts that Clement traces, often by way of Egypt, to the Hebrews. And as he illustrates how Greek arts and artists have misunderstood and perverted the truth, how savage and idolatrous mysteries, rites, and orgies have deceived mankind, Clement asserts that John the Baptist, who “summoned men to prepare for the presence of God,” recognized the necessity of katharsis: “if you long to see God truly, take part in purifications [καθαρσίων/ piaculorum] meet for Him, not of laurel leaves and fillets embellished with wool and purple, but crown yourself with righteousness, let your wreath be woven from the leaves of self-control [ἐγκρατείας/ continentiae], and seek diligently after Christ.”112 Katharsis is a process through which passions are refined and controlled, tied indelibly to reason and the ability to recognize God.113 It is in this sense that rituals of initiation and purification are related to the passions. Clement lays claim here to a primitive katharsis that is warped by heathens, revealing their profane rites of purification and initiation to be idolatrous transformations of otherwise pious procedures. Pointing again to the Hebrew sources of art and philosophy, so crucial to Jesus’ response to Satan in Paradise Regain’d, Clement foregrounds versions of katharsis that Milton may have consulted to understand the Poetics and the utility of tragedy.114 The lustratio that shapes Paradise Regain’d trains our attention to Jesus’ passions—specifically, to the exemplary control he exercises over his passions across the temptations. Although he does not explicitly posit the priority of Hebrew art and philosophy, Daniel Heinsius advances a complementary reading of katharsis in De Tragoediae Constitutione, offering a more thorough and imaginative account than Robortello, Vettori, Minturno, Vincenzo Maggi and Bartolomeo Lombardi, or Antonio Riccoboni, all of whom generally rely on the familiar distinction between Plato 110  Philo of Alexandria, “De victimis” [1613], 654–5; [1937], 242–5. 111  CS, 67; CA, 219. 112  Clement of Alexandria [1919], 24–7; and CA, 6–7. 113  Clement of Alexandria [1919], 214–17; CA, 46. 114  Martyrdom, for instance, emerges in the Stromateis as “a glorious purgation” [κάθαρσιν ἔνδοξον/ gloriosam expurgationem]. Clement also depicts providence itself as an “art of teaching” [παιδευτικῆς τέχνης/ ars erudiens] through which “punishments” [κολάσεις/ punitiones] and “expiations” [καθάρσια/ expiationes] are administered—a claim that Sylburgius annotates. CA, 375–6, 370, 371, 25 [“Annotationes”].

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and Aristotle while eschewing other references to ancient works sacred or profane.115 Like Philo and Clement of Alexandria, Heinsius identifies a katharsis that antecedes the Poetics, pointing to the Presocratic origins of the purgation theory among the Pythagoreans of “the Italian School” at Kroton.116 To this end, he delivers a brief account of Pythagorean purgatio, probably drawn from Iamblichus’ De Vita Pythagorae: In order to begin that life which most closely approximates immortal God (this consists in contemplation alone, because it is the work of the mind), Pythagoras used to induce beforehand a kind of purgation like physicians employed. By this, the passions [affectus] (which are emotions [perturbationes] and stirrings [tempestates] of the soul) would be gradually alleviated. The senses, which conflict with the intellect, could be either separated from the latter’s function, or calmly set in order or allayed. He used to say that man lacking sense and mind resembles plants; lacking mind alone, brutes; lacking passions and stirrings, which strive against reason, God.117

Through purgation of the passions, man approximates divinity in his understanding. Heinsius’ account recalls Iamblichus’ own reference to Aristotle’s lost Philosophia Pythagorica in which Pythagoras himself achieves “a true understanding, according with reality . . . [of ] everything in the universe, heaven and earth and the beings between, visible and invisible”—a godly or godlike comportment to the world.118 As Pythagoras realizes this perspective, so too does he establish practices that “purge the mind” [καθαρτικὰ/ purgent mentem] and ready it for contemplation and understanding according to reason.119 Yet Heinsius shifts from Pythagoras to Aristotle when he identifies practices or “habits” that reduce and regulate the passions “according to the rule of reason”; this is not necessarily a homeopathic or purgative process, moreover, but rather a discipline and purification through exposure. Just as “a person who often views miseries, commiserates rightly, and to the proper extent,” or as “he who frequently looks on those things which move horror, at length feels less horror than he ought,” katharsis in tragedy affords audiences an education in the passions.120 They are exposed to passions so that they might temper them and put them to use. Heinsius claims that tragedy, among other philosophical and religious practices, serves as “a kind of training hall for our passions which (since they are not only useful in life but even necessary) ought to be readied and released there [praeparari ibi & oportet, & absolvi].”121 Where tragic 115  Julius Caesar Scaliger bypasses katharsis in his account of tragedy, even as he cites Aristotle, noting only that “the notion of katharsis is by no means useful in every case” [κάθαρσις vox neutiquam cuiuis materiae servit]. Scaliger [1964], 11–12; Aristotle [1970], 4–5, 65–6; Maggi and Lombardi [1969], 96–8; and Deitz [1995]. 116  PT, 11; DTC, 10. 117  PT, 11, 16–17; DTC, 10–11; and Iamblichus [1598], 73–6. 118  Iamblichus [1598], 44–5; [1989], 12–13; and Lurje [2002], 228–33, 252–3. 119  For Heinsius, it is crucial that these practices enable Pythagoras and his acolytes to “see the real principles and causes of all there is,” tying katharsis together to the philosophical ambit of tragedy he affirms in De tragoediae constitutione. Iamblichus [1598], 45; and [1989], 12–13. 120  PT, 12; DTC, 13. 121  Sellin translates absolvi as “perfected” which is perhaps too strong. PT, 12 [I alter the translation]; DTC, 13.



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katharsis is a process of purification, it is achieved, almost paradoxically, through trial and exposure. Moreover, while Heinsius’ term “absolvi” does not preclude discharge or release according to the purgative theory of katharsis, it generally implies that audiences are loosed or freed (as if from slavery or a debt or sin) from passions that might otherwise cloud their judgment and overwhelm their experience of the world. When he uses absolvo to express its effects, moreover, Heinsius invites us to associate katharsis with religious rites of pardon and salvation. The religious valences of absolvo are more pronounced once Heinsius invokes Jesus to illustrate the ideal discipline achieved through katharsis. However intuitive, the reference to Jesus is idiosyncratic among early modern commentaries on the Poetics, most of which avoid comparisons between things sacred and profane. Like Castelvetro’s 1570 Poetica, De Tragoediae Constitutione is innovative in this respect.122 Arguing that “laughter” [risum] in particular is an all-too-human expression of passion, “a proof and sign of a mind acting not from reason but the rule of the sense,” Heinsius affirms the judgment of those “Doctors of the Church [who] note that our Savior never laughed but wept, and above all avoided that foul superfluity of worldly pleasure and joy.”123 Jesus was not subject to inordinate passions that compromised his reason. Nevertheless, Jesus wept, evidence of moderate passions that are at once under his control and put to deliberate use. Jesus emerges in De Tragoediae Constitutione as a model of katharsis at the moment that Heinsius affirms the familiar distinction between Plato and Aristotle on tragedy: “The one considered tragedy to be a fan of the passions; the other thought that tragedy is a device for putting the passions to use.”124 Emphasizing katharsis as a process of rationalization whereby passions are rendered useful, Heinsius suggests that Jesus realizes the potential articulated by Pythagoras for godly comprehension of things in themselves. Once again, Clement of Alexandria’s theses on katharsis and pedagogy are crucial, particularly where he claims that God’s “use of fear [φόβος/ timor] is a device for saving us,” a deliberate expression of his pity [ἔλεος/ misericordia].125 Throughout the Admonitio ad Graecos seu ad Gentes, the Paedagogus, and the Stromateis—and remember, Heinsius edited Clement’s Opera for publication in 1616—the discipline of the passions is integral to reason and piety, affording wise men “a true knowledge of real beings in their real states, possessing perfection, being free from passion of all sorts [παντὸς πάθους ἀπηλλαγμένη/ libera ab omni animi perturbatione].”126 Clement compares the passions to “a disease of truth”; God, in turn, instructs by means of moderate passions like fear and shame, “dissolving the hardness of passion” [τὰ τετυλωμένα ἀναλύων τῶν παθῶν/ resolvit affectiones quae iam occalluerunt] and “purging the lusts, the impurities of life” [τὰ ῥυπαρὰ τοῦ βίου τῆς λαγείας ἀνακαθαίρων/ impudicaeque & libidinosae vitae sordes expurgat].127 Clement compares this process to surgery and the administration of physic, but the katharsis or anakatharsis is not necessarily purgative. 122  Vossius, for instance, develops Heinsius’ theses, often retaining the same language, but shies away from this reference to Christ. See Vossius [2010], 456–61, 507–11. 123  PT, 14; DTC, 17. 124  PT, 14; DTC, 17. 125  Clement of Alexandria [1954], 72–3; and CA, 92. 126  CS, 152–3; and CA, 260. 127  Clement of Alexandria [1954], 58–9; and CA, 85.

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It is a process through which the wise achieve clarity of thought, albeit never without Christ. It is, once again, achieved through trial and exposure to excessive passions, not sequestered from the world but rather immersed in it. It must be said, moreover, that Clement marks an important distinction between Stoicism and Hebraic philosophy with respect to the passions. The Stoics, he claims, are “parasitic accusers” as their doctrine bears faint traces of Hebrew ­philosophy but, ignorant of their debts, they deploy their degraded theses on the passions against the more focused, pious, and ancient articulations of temperance.128 As Clement reinforces Philo’s association between the Mosaic “Know yourself ” and katharsis, he duly points to the right use of moderate passions, asserting that “Sins are cleansed by acts of mercy and faith” [Ἐλεημοσύναις [οὖν] [καὶ] πί[στ]εσιν ἀποκαθαίρονται/ Eleemosynis . . . & fide expurgantur peccato] and that “The fear of the Lord is education and wisdom.”129 Fear and pity in particular are useful, conducive to piety, yet Stoics disregard such passions as inordinate expressions of human ignorance. The Stoics, moreover, censure Hebrew philosophy for ascribing all-too-human passions to an impassible God. There is some truth to this, Clement admits. That God is best intelligible to us by way of passion is evidence of our human frailty. Nevertheless, that God accommodates itself to us is also proof of God’s care for humanity. It does not change the fact that the “divine is free alike from need and passion”; human beings are best able to understand this about God when “we follow justice in our journey in purity [καθαροὶ] towards piety . . . so far as possible in the likeness of the Lord, although in our nature remaining subject to death.”130 Milton himself follows Clement when he distinguishes between God as he accommodates himself in Scripture, in which he appears “exactly as he . . . wants to be imagined,” and the God that humans imagine in their own defective likeness by way of anthropopathy [ἀνθρωποπάθεια].131 The Jesus of Paradise Regain’d, moreover, is no Stoic. He remains patient and temperate, although no less faithful or zealous, in the face of temptation. And he is generally unmoved by Satan’s presentations; when he is moved he responds not with inordinate passion but with sagacity or righteous disdain. Jesus realizes the self-control he articulates in Book II, wherein he claims that “he who reigns within himself, and rules/ Passions, Desires, and Fears, is more a King;/ Which every wise and vertuous man attains” (PR II.466–8). Nevertheless, when he criticizes the “Stoic severe” (PR IV.280) in Book IV, Jesus marshals Philo and Clement and Heinsius against Satan. Where the sacred philosophy and lustrations teach the pious to know themselves and to moderate the passions with reference to God, the Stoics are “Ignorant of themselves, of God much more” (PR IV.310, my emphasis). “Much of the Soul they talk,” he claims, “but all awrie,/ And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves,/ All glory arrogate, to God give none” (PR IV.313–15). Theirs is an inadequate temperance, a parody of temperance, and Satan’s claim—that such “rules will render thee a King compleat/ Within thy self, much more with Empire joyn’d” (PR IV.283–4)—betrays his own fundamental misunderstanding of Miltonic katharsis. In Paradise Regain’d, in short, lustratio is 128  CS, 205–6; and CA, 286. 129  CS, 205–6; and CA, 286. 130  CS, 212; CA, 289. 131  DDC, 28–33.



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an initiatory rite involving trial and exposure through which human beings might come to understand themselves with respect to God. This understanding, in turn, grounds their relationship to the passions. The Stoic maintains only the façade of self-control insofar as they lack theological and historical perspectives on divinity; Jesus’ mastery over the passions rests in his faith, a faith that is shaped and confirmed by passions, experiences, and trials. LU S T R AT I O A S U N D E R S TA N D I N G A C H I E V E D BY TRIAL In the 1671 volume Milton subtly collates Aristotle’s tragic katharsis with Jesus’ model temperance and perspective, expanding the tragic archive to include accounts of purification and sacrifice beyond the Poetics. Once again, Milton does not “Christianize” tragedy or katharsis. He insists, rather, that readers locate Aristotle’s lustratio among myriad antique rites of purification after Moses, weighing the continuities and discontinuities across Athenian and Hebrew milieux. In fact, Milton suggests that the katharsis or lustratio to which Aristotle refers, with which he begins Samson Agonistes, is derivative of sacred processes, testifying to tragedy’s origins among the Hebrews as well as its prominence across a variety of sacred texts, from I Corinthians to Pareus’ commentary on Revelation to Clement’s Stromateis. Aristotle is not original, nor is the lustratio of the Poetics distinct—save for the fact that tragedy is its particular medium and fear and pity its proper affects. If there is truth to the Poetics, if katharsis is efficacious, it does not prove Aristotle’s authority but rather vindicates Mosaic philosophy and Hebrew antiquity. Milton develops his notion of katharsis further at the end of Samson Agonistes as the tragedy culminates in a description of lustration administered by God. After the Messenger reports Samson’s death, the Chorus claims that: All is best, though we oft doubt, What th’ unsearchable dispose Of highest wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns And to his faithful Champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns And all that band them to resist His uncontroulable intent, His servants he with new acquist Of true experience from this great event With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent.  (SA, 1735–48)

The final line of the tragedy, “calm of mind all passion spent,” seems to describe the outcome of Aristotelian katharsis, the purging or expiation of passions through fear and pity. As the audience comprised of God’s “servants” only hear this report,

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Milton follows Aristotle to the letter on spectacle, particularly where he stipulates that a tragic plot “should be so structured that, even without seeing it performed, the person who hears the events that occur experiences horror and pity at what comes about” (1453b.3–5).132 The Messenger’s report of the scene is enough to inspire the requisite passions. Aware of Samson’s fate, the faithful achieve a certain “calm of mind,” their passions tempered by their “true experience” of fear and pity. The faithful, exposed to excessive passions across the play, learn moderation and find “peace and consolation.” Just as the “new-baptiz’d” Apostles in Book II of Paradise Regain’d learn, through lustration, to “Lay” their doubts and fears “on his Providence” (PR II.54), so too do the faithful in Samson Agonistes affirm that “What th’ unsearchable dispose/ Of highest wisdom brings about” is indeed “best.” Milton foregrounds how the passions are used, exhausted, “spent” in the “new acquist/ Of true experience.” Passions, in other words, are mobilized across the poem to this end: the acquisition of experience, so crucial to faith and virtue across Milton’s oeuvre. Katharsis is not merely a matter of purgation or expiation; it points, rather, to prolonged exposure or trial through which faith is shaped through reason, feeling, and, in circumstances both exceptional and unexceptional, sacrifice. In these final fourteen lines of the tragedy Milton builds on the antique valences of katharsis, particularly the Hebrew rites which afford men clarity of thought, enabling them to comprehend God in increasingly rational terms. It seems at first that God dismisses his servants who in turn depart “With peace and consolation . . . And calm of mind all passion spent.” They have achieved katharsis and have acquired true experience. This is undoubtedly the most obvious reading of these lines. Nevertheless, God’s agencies here are curious, inviting another reading. However improbable, Milton invites us to identify God as the agent of the final line: God bears witness “gloriously” to Samson’s triumph; God’s is the “uncontroulable intent” of line 1744; God dismisses his servants with “calm of mind”; God has “spent” all passion in this endeavor. The grammar of the poem defies our expectations regarding who or what, precisely, “all passion spent.” This is deliberately jarring and difficult, forcing the reader to work carefully through these final lines, to place the subject of katharsis directly in relation to God. Across the antique rites and philosophies on which Milton draws, passions are integral to this process. So too are passions integral to Miltonic notions of the deity. As Michael Lieb keenly illustrates, for instance, fear, dread, and even hate are key aspects of the godhead as it accommodates itself to human understanding in Scripture.133 Milton is reluctant to render God in abstract unaccommodated terms; he resists the urge to describe an impassible deity by way of philosophy, to abandon all attempts to imagine God as he appears in Scripture—that is, as a passionate God. To imagine God as having affectus is perfectly legitimate. Indeed, Milton claims, Scripture demands that we do so: If God is said after six days’ labour to be refreshed by rest, Exod. 31: 17, and to fear the truculence of the enemy, Deut. 32: 27, let us believe that it is not beneath God to be grieved at what grieves him, to be refreshed by what refreshes him, to fear what he 132  AP, 72–5.

133  Lieb [2006], 163–209.



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fears. Try as you may to soften these and similar statements about God with long, roundabout explanations, the result will be the same. If God is said to have created man after his own image, after his own likeness, Gen. 1: 26—and not just a spiritual one, either, but an outward physical one too, unless the same words do not mean the same as later, ch. 5: 3, where Adam begot a son after his own likeness, after his own image— and if God assigned himself a thoroughly human body and aspect, why should we be afraid to assign him what he assigned himself, so long as we believe that what is imperfect and feeble in us is most perfect and beautiful wherever assigned to God?134

At the same time, however, Milton warns theologians not to engage in anthropopathy, not to imagine God in their own degraded likeness or to follow the antique grammarians who rendered divinity intelligible on their own terms “to justify poets’ nonsense about their god Jupiter.”135 Milton negotiates these issues in the final lines of the poem, presenting God as “th’ unsearchable dispose/ Of highest wisdom,” as an abstract expression of providence, which “seems to hide his face,/ But unexpectedly returns”; “seems” is crucial here, pointing to the work of accommodation and interpretation. God may seem passionate, even capricious, but he is nonetheless fundamentally alien to human nature. If we identify the “His” in lines 1744 and 1745 with God, moreover, we encounter a deity of “uncontroulable intent,” where “uncontroulable” points to God’s absolute power and authority. Nevertheless, this is also a spectator God who himself bears witness “gloriously” to Samson’s triumph—an uncanny expression which places God the Father, etymologically, in the place of the μάρτυρος or martyr. If God is the audience here for Samson’s fatal victory, and Milton’s God accommodates himself to human intellects by way of the passions, it is not unreasonable to imagine that the angry God dismisses his servants after he achieves peace and consolation through katharsis, having spent his passion observing Samson’s sacrifice. Milton lays bare the sacred origins of katharsis here, as a propitiatory rite related to Mosaic philosophy. Where Jesus lays claim to tragedy in Paradise Regain’d, citing its origins in Hebrew ­antiquity and its corruption among the Greeks and their imitators, Milton follows Jesus’ gesture, employing the ancient form to investigate faith, piety, providence, and what it is we talk about when we talk about God.

134  DDC, 30–1.

135  DDC, 28–9.

C O N C LU S I O N [C ATA S T R O P H E ]

Conclusion Samson Agonistes and the Limits of Tragedy Machina cum Deo, nihil usitatius. Nothing is as common as a device involving a god. Daniel Heinsius, De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611)

Samson Agonistes enjoys a peculiar status in the history of English tragedy. Where Milton’s debts to Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson are patent elsewhere, Samson Agonistes bears much more resemblance to antique tragedy or dramata sacra in Greek or Latin than it does to any early modern tragedy in English. Given his interest in Attic tragedy and its impact on the language of Samson Agonistes, Milton’s sole extant tragedy is in many ways more consonant with later Hellenist experiments like Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon (1865) than with the vernacular tragedies written by his Restoration contemporaries, shaped as they are by very different philological, commercial, and ethical commitments.1 Even among Restoration poetics, Milton’s signal references to David Pareus and Gregory of Nazianzus, his tragic archive, and his subtle interpretation of the Poetics all stand in contrast to more familiar and authoritative “Neoclassicist” experiments in English—John Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), for instance, or Thomas Rymer’s formative English edition of René Rapin’s Réflexions sur la poétique d’Aristote (1674). Milton’s long interest in Reformation poetics and tragoedia sacra comes to a head in Samson Agonistes—an interest that is apparent in his earlier drafts and sketches of so many unfinished biblical and historical tragedies, p ­ robably conceived with works like Buchanan’s Baptistes, Hugo Grotius’ Adamus Exul, or Heinsius’ Herodes Infanticida in mind.2 In his description of “Baptistes,” for instance, the first of his tragedies “On New Testament Themes” in the Trinity Manuscript, he is peculiarly eager to stress the unity of action as well as communicate his reluctance to mix things sacred and profane, preoccupations which suggest some familiarity with the debates concerning tragedy and sacred fabulae that come to a head in the dispute between Daniel Heinsius and Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac in the 1630s.3 As he sketches the plot of “Baptistes” Milton justifies every scene, 1  See Mueller [1980], 193–212; Hale [1997], 180–93; and Crawforth [2016], 239–60. 2  Among his outlines for tragedies based on New Testament fabulae, Milton includes a “Baptistes” and a “Herod massacring. or Rachel weeping Math. 2.” See Lewalski [2000], 123–4; Milton, “Milton’s Outlines for Tragedies” [1938], 228–45. See also Zurcher [2013], 182–205. 3  I mention this controversy in Chapter 4, p. 203; and deal with it in more detail in my forthcoming article “Herod and the Furies: Daniel Heinsius and the Representation of Affect in Tragedy.”

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explaining how the events fit together seamlessly. And in a brief comment that is reminiscent of Heinsius’ defense of the Furies in Herodes Infanticida, Milton also stipulates that if a spirit were to appear to Herod—in this case, “the spirit of Herods brother” instead of Heinsius’ Furies—it would be because Herod was already set “to some passion” or else “well bedew’d himself with wine”; a ghost would only be admitted to “prologize” under certain circumstances, not as a real specter à la Seneca but as a representative figure of passion or drunken delusion.4 Reformation poetics shaped the tragedies Milton outlined in the Trinity Manuscript, formative meditations on tragedy and its resources that remained relevant into the Restoration as he prepared Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes for publication in 1671. In addition to Attic tragedy, then, Milton availed himself of a rich tradition of Reformation poetics and tragoedia sacra when he composed Samson Agonistes. Tragedy emerges here not only as an august ancient form with a sacred pedigree. It also affords Milton, like so many of his predecessors, precise dialectical resources with which to investigate faith and agency. Heinsius’ De Tragoediae Constitutione and Herodes Infanticida are directly relevant to Samson Agonistes, even as Milton tests Heinsius’ theses, pointing to tragedy’s limits, demarcating the work of the spirit from the forms of agency and causality that are intelligible, palpable, even passible in tragedy. A careful reading of Milton’s treatise “Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy” suggests that he followed De Tragoediae Constitutione more closely than most scholars have heretofore recognized.5 First, Milton implies (like Heinsius) that neither spectacle [ὄψις] nor measure [μελοποιία] are essential to tragedy, despite Aristotle’s definition in Chapter VI of the Poetics.6 Taking Heinsius’ revision as a point of departure, Milton claims that the “measure of Verse us’d in the Chorus,” initially related to the music, is “not essential to the Poem, and therefore not material.”7 Moreover, he deliberately minimizes the importance of spectacle and performance. He does note that tragedy “as it was antiently compos’d” achieved its intended effects when passions were “stirr’d up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated,” but there is no other explicit reference to ὄψις or any form of performance beyond his disparaging remark against those “common Interludes” and deficient tragedies which “among us passes for best.”8 Milton ­tacitly suggests, rather, that spectacle is inessential to tragedy and thus performance is incidental to its purpose or definition. Samson Agonistes is not organized by act and scene, he claims, because such divisions pertain only to the stage “to which this work never was intended.”9 This is not an endorsement of some vague notion of “closet drama.” It is a Heinsian admission that spectacle and stage-playing are ­ultimately foreign to poetry and inessential to tragedy. Milton and his circle held Heinsius in high esteem. Milton’s nephew and former student Edward Phillips 4  Milton, “Milton’s Outlines for Tragedies” [1938], 240. 5  This is perhaps because scholars have heretofore based their discussions of influence on katharsis. See, for instance, Sellin [1961], 712–30; and Steadman [1971], 175–207. 6  For an interesting view to the contrary, implying that Milton’s early encounters with drama in print and performance shaped his approach to spectacle in Samson Agonistes, see Burbery [2007], 98–100. 7  M1671, 68 [my emphasis]. 8  M1671, 66 [my emphasis], 67. 9  M1671, 68.



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even names Heinsius as “the most fam’d of Hollanders, and the most Celebrated by Learned Men for his egregious Wit, and deep proficiency in all kind of Literature.”10 And Milton himself undoubtedly knew Heinsius’ poetic, philological, and theological work just as he was familiar with the writing of his son Nicholaas Heinsius. Milton and Heinsius even shared a formidable adversary in Claude Saumaise, or Salmasius. His interest in—and in this case, fidelity to—De Tragoediae Constitutione is hardly surprising. Milton thus follows Heinsius as he simultaneously emphasizes plot and dismisses spectacle and performance. Virtually all of the commentaries available to Milton recognized the primacy of plot in the Poetics, but Heinsius marks the distinction between plot and spectacle in a much stronger and more exclusive manner than Robortello, Vettori, Minturno, or even Castelvetro. Milton initially invokes Horace’s Ars Poetica when he testifies that “It suffices if the whole Drama be found not produc’t beyond the fift Act,” recalling Horace’s injunction that “no play be either shorter or longer than five acts, if when once seen it hopes to be called for and brought back to the stage” [Neve minor neu sit quinto productior actu/ fabula quae posci volt et spectata reponi].11 It is the next line in the Ars Poetica, however, that is particularly salient to Samson Agonistes, as Horace refers directly to tragic machinae: “let no god intervene, unless a knot come worthy of such a deliverer” [nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus/ inciderit].12 But Milton certainly does not share Horace’s concern for duration or the tastes of audiences. At this point in the preface he has already refused to divide Samson Agonistes into acts and scenes because these refer only to the stage. Milton is much more interested in plot in tragedy. And like Heinsius, he moves quickly beyond the Horatian terminology when he insists on the completeness of his tragedy, on its “style and uniformite” which is “commonly call’d the Plot . . . which is nothing indeed but such oeconomy, or disposition of the fable as may stand best with verisimilitude and decorum.”13 In his own commentary on the Ars Poetica, Heinsius again marks the distinction between the arts of poetry and stagecraft, between plot and spectacle, emphasizing that a machine is the “poet’s last refuge” [ultimum refugium Poëtae].14 Poets employ devices—and thus another art altogether—when they can no longer resolve their plots poetically. As he develops this critical judgment in De Tragoediae Constitutione, Heinsius affirms that “Machina cum Deo, nihil usitatius”—that “Nothing is as common as a device involving a god.”15 Usitatus is a crucial term here. Not only is the deus ex machina the most common or familiar type of device, Heinsius also implies that poets all-too-frequently employ such devices to resolve unruly plots. They are common, particularly in the species of tragedy which “passes for best” among seventeenth-century audiences. A great tragedy—a depiction of a complete action that at once exhibits natural affects and mores, natural causes and effects, according to probability or necessity—is far more rare. 10  Phillips [1675], 29. 11  Horace [1926], 466–7. 12  Horace [1926], 466–7. 13  M1671, 68. 14 Horace [1629], [“165” in the pagination in “Danielis Heinsii In  Q.  Horatium Flaccum Animadversiones et Notae”]. 15  PT, 63; DTC, 97.

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Milton is certainly aware of Aristotle’s judgment concerning devices in tragedy. In De Doctrina Christiana he even employs the same theatrical expression that Aristotle uses in the Metaphysics to disparage Anaxagoras—that is, that “Anaxagoras uses reason as a deus ex machina for the making of the world,” taking recourse to this stage contrivance “when he is at a loss to tell for what cause something necessarily is.”16 Milton in turn claims that his opponents “resort to this as though to a stage contrivance” [eò enim tanquam ad machinam confugiunt] when they cite abstract notions of divine power to support their baseless claims concerning Christ’s nature.17 Milton’s “confugo” suggests familiarity with Heinsius’ treatment of this passage in De Tragoediae Constitutione, where he illustrates how the Aristotelian idiom “to drag in a machine or device” [Trahere machinam] is tantamount to “fleeing” or “escaping” [effugo or elabor] to a machine—that is to say, forfeiting rational explanation by taking recourse to some fantastic explanation beyond the action of the tragedy.18 The machine is the “poet’s last refuge,” the tool to which the common poet turns when they cannot resolve a plot on its own terms. And where Heinsius equates stage machines in tragedy with divine interventions, asking audiences to think critically about easy supernatural solutions to otherwise natural processes, miraculous solutions that interrupt the totality of the action, Milton often challenges his readers to consider the improbability of miracles. The very word “miracle” first appears in Paradise Lost in Eve’s address to Satan in Book IX; admitting that she was not previously aware that the serpent was “with human voice endued,” Eve asks that it “Redouble then this miracle, and say,/ How cam’st thou speakable of mute, and how/ To me so friendly grown above the rest/ Of brutal kind, that daily are in sight” (IX.560–5, my emphasis). To the letter, then, the first “miracle” in Paradise Lost is no miracle at all but rather a testament to Eve’s ignorance, anathema to the precise thinking concerning probability, verisimilitude, or necessity in nature that tragedy affords its audiences. Make no mistake: Milton certainly believes in miracles and often affirms that divine intervention is as fundamental to providence as it is to Scripture. Nor does Heinsius deny the possibility of miracles in nature or categorically reject Scriptural instances of divine intervention, even if he emphasizes the degree to which tragedy is a philosophical resource, making every effort in Herodes Infanticida to eschew miracles and devices that interrupt the plot or obscure the relations between affects and actions, causes and effects. The point here is that both Milton and Heinsius recognize the degree to which tragedy is compromised by the “common” or (from a poetic standpoint) artless recourse to devices, miracles, or dei ex machinis. But insofar as Milton uses De Tragoediae Constitutione so too does he deliver a subtle but thorough critique of Heinsius’ theses on tragedy. Indeed, Samson Agonistes ultimately troubles approaches to tragedy that emphasize reason and precision, probability and necessity, at the expense of providence. While Milton communicates his familiarity with the Poetics in “Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call’d Tragedy” he does not proceed to write a tragedy according to a set of 16  Aristotle [1984], 1558 [985a 18–21]. 18  PT, 64–5; DTC, 99–100.

17  DDC, 480–1.



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Aristotelian rules. On the contrary, Samson Agonistes tests the tensile strength of Aristotelian tragedy insofar as Milton consistently challenges the ancient form’s capacity to reduce divine inspiration to the rerum constitutio of the tragic plot, to render the spirit intelligible in terms of natural probability or necessity. What is at stake is the extent to which one can rationally understand or depict the causality of divine inspiration. And while Samson Agonistes is hardly an unproblematic endorsement of enthusiasm, Milton poses the causal and affective relations that comprise enthusiasm as a set of problems. An Aristotelian approach to tragedy makes these problems more apparent, particularly where Heinsius illustrates how machinae complicate our understanding of causality. For Heinsius, nothing in tragedy is as common or ordinary or artless as a device involving a god [Machina cum Deo, nihil usitatius], an observation which applies more to the staged entries of gods in the ancient dramas than to the “Secret refreshings” (665) and “divine disposal” (210) by inward persuasion of Samson Agonistes. Milton recognizes and exploits the extent to which this idea of inspiration complicates Aristotelian approaches to tragedy. He suggests that this may indeed be the case: that nothing is as common as a device involving a God, that God’s activity in the world far and frequently exceeds its conservation of nature, that divine intervention is a routine feature of human thought, action, and affect. It is so common, in fact, that it resists depiction in tragedy, complicating the unity of action, frustrating attempts to map nature or providence as a totality. In Samson Agonistes, after all, it is often difficult to discern how the diverse acts and affects relate to one another, according to apodeictic or dialectic reasoning. The points of relation or connection are often obscure. This is evident in the Argument, where we learn that Samson is “at length perswaded inwardly that this was from God” and thus accompanies the “Publick Officer” to the Feast of Dagon [my emphasis]. In turn, after what Milton refers to in the Argument as “the Catastrophe,” the Messenger reports what “Samson had done to the Philistins, and by accident to himself ”; here “accident” is a philosophical term addressing causality, drawing our attention to the structure of the plot, the extent to which the fabula and personae from Judges are incorporated into the tragedy in such a way as to shed light on the generic conditions of divine inspiration with new ­philosophical precision. He draws our attention to action, paradoxically, to disabuse us of the notion that inspiration is readily intelligible to us in dialectical terms. Jesus’ frustrating lines in Paradise Regain’d apply to Aristotelian tragedy as well: Think not but that I know these things, or think I know them not; not therefore am I short Of knowing what I aught: he who receives Light from above, from the fountain of light, No other doctrine needs, though granted true.  (PR IV.286–90)

Milton, like his Jesus, dismisses the attempt to render the action or distribution of “Light from above” intelligible in human terms, in tragedy. As I illustrated in Chapter 4, while Heinsius recognizes certain cases where a plot or its source material renders a device probable or necessary, he ultimately

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delivers a thorough critique of machinae, deriding those “usitatus” (that is to say, “common” or “ordinary”) poets that forgo rigor and care, artlessly resolving a plot by introducing a device involving a god. Tragedy is more philosophical than history precisely because it demonstrates natural forms of relation and causality, because it deals with the universal rather than the particular, enabling the reader to understand how actions and affects are connected and related generically and universally. Tragedy, in its unity, affords the reader an understanding of causality, of necessity and probability, where anything that takes shape in the tragedy can be explained by other elements in the same tragedy. For Heinsius, a tragedy is an object lesson in immanent causality. The deus ex machina or machina cum deo violates this principle insofar as it introduces an element that is otherwise foreign to the unity or totality of action in the tragedy, and thus introduces a miraculous end that does not follow necessarily from the totality of events and affects that otherwise constitute the work. De Tragoediae Constitutione is replete with examples. Even under specific circumstances that render them acceptable, machinae are for Heinsius as for Aristotle a last resort. A device should thus only appear when entirely necessary, and then only under certain circumstances. The entrance of a god, where the best tragedies are concerned, is very rare. Milton, after Heinsius, recognizes how tragedy might foreground necessity and probability in a precise way; this is the purchase of Aristotelian tragedy, and the philosophical knowledge of causality it enables. Yet Milton reconfigures these investigations of tragedy to pose a formal-theological question: where, if at all, does a god—that is, God—intervene in Samson Agonistes, in order to help either the personae or the audience understand the plot of the tragedy? Or: is precise knowledge of God at all necessary to understand the work? Can one really understand or depict the work of the Spirit, whether according to the most orthodox determinations of faith or according to the wildest heterodox defenses of enthusiasm? Milton poses these questions artfully and, as I illustrate in what follows, declines to answer them with certainty. The ambiguity that Milton introduces, rather, between the reason and consistency of Aristotelian tragedy, the Samson story in the Book of Judges, and the work of the Spirit in Christian life challenges the reader, auditor, or participant in Samson Agonistes to reconsider their most hallowed assumptions concerning faith and action. Milton shares the view of tragedy that most of the figures in Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World hold, that the form hones our attention to action and agency. Samson Agonistes, in other words, is an attempt to depict the probable or necessary course of action with respect to an inscrutable Spirit. Under these conditions, however, it is nigh impossible for any human agent who is denied inspiration to grasp action as a totality. Indeed, the text of the poem is dedicated to complicating precisely this; if Paradise Lost marks Milton’s attempt to justify the ways of God to men, the 1671 poems illustrate the impossibility of the same endeavor. Insofar as Milton ties Samson Agonistes to the history of Reformation tragedy, he makes this impossibility all the more apparent. Samson Agonistes is a case study not in immanent causality but in “faintings, swounings of despair,/ And sense of Heav’ns desertion” (631–2), sad passions and desperate actions that obscure the unity of action. There is seldom an authoritative explanation of how actions, affects, or



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mores follow from one another, to say nothing of a theological justification of their relation. Here Milton tests the limits of both apodeictic and dialectic reasoning, if not philosophy tout court. Indeed, Samson’s affective athleticism—the vicissitudes of his liminal passions—and the lack of divine assurance structure the poem. In Samson’s opening address (which would technically be the prologue), for instance, prior to the Choral recitations or any of the episodic interactions between the characters and the Chorus, he asks, “Why was my breeding order’d and prescrib’d/ As of a person separate to God,/ Design’d for great exploits” (30–2), which remains a provocative question even after his own exhortation, “let me not rashly call in doubt/ Divine Prediction” (43–4), and the Choral injunction: “Tax not divine disposal” (210).19 Soon after, the Chorus offers a like rejoinder to its own a­ ffirmation “Just are the ways of God,/ And justifiable to Men” (293–4): Yet more there be who doubt his ways not just, As to his own edicts, found contradicting, Then give the rains to wandring thought, Regardless of his glories diminution; Till by thir own perplexities involv’d They ravel more, still less resolv’d, But never find self-satisfying solution. As if they would confine th’ interminable, And tie him to his own prescript, Who made our Laws to bind us, not himself, And hath full right to exempt Whom so it pleases him by choice From National obstriction, without taint Of sin, or legal debt; For with his own Laws he can best dispence.  (300–14)

Thus the lines “Just are the ways of God,/ And justifiable to Men” take shape more as a provocation than an assertion. We are left to seek evidence of God’s justice, evidence which Aristotelian tragedy, with its philosophical precision and singular concern for the unity or totality of affects and actions, is poised to reveal. With this said, however, whenever the poem affirms God’s providence, it gives little evidence of it. If other tragedies may be judged by the way they foreground probability or necessity, Samson Agonistes deals in mystery and confusion. When the Hebrew Messenger probes the terms of providence his testimony is confused: “But providence or instinct of nature seems,/ Or reason though disturb’d, and scarce consulted/ To have guided me aright, I know not how,/ To thee first reverend Manoa, and to these/ My Countreymen, whom here I knew remaining,/ As at some distance from the place of horrour,/ So in the sad event too much concern’d” (1545–51).20 And when Manoa responds to the Messenger, it is explicitly in a language suited to formal investigations of tragedy. His response betrays a familiarity with the likes of Heinsius. The Messenger’s address “No Preface needs” (1554) in the sense that he is to eschew episode and adornment in his relation of the catastrophe; the importance 19  M1671, 71–2, 77.

20  M1671, 113–14.

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of lines 1545–51 is thus reduced by Manoa, rendered unnecessary to his (and our) understanding of the truth of the catastrophe. Even here, the Messenger’s indecision concerning the relevance of providence is relegated to the “Preface,” understood as prefatory material; it is unclear how necessary it is to the plot, or whether it lies outside the action of the tragedy at large. To a certain degree, this is consistent with the Scriptural account of Samson’s life in the Book of Judges. Judges famously concludes, “In those dayes there was no King in Israel: every man did that which was right in his owne eyes” (Judges 21:25), a rejoinder that complicates the assumption that the narratives collected throughout the book are heroic tales of judges inspired by the Spirit.21 There are of course clear indicators that God is at work throughout the book of Judges—Samson’s birth is after all foretold by an angel—but Milton seizes upon ambiguous moments throughout the work in order to underline the overwhelming illegibility of the Holy Spirit in human actions. As Joseph Wittreich explains, Milton’s project is largely a reorganization of the Judges narrative based on recollection and repetition; “Through his scrambling of the Judges sequence,” Wittreich claims, “Milton produces unexpected and emphatic juxtapositions, attendant shifts of emphasis, and jarring dramatic ironies.”22 Milton does this to emphasize precisely how difficult it is to understand the stories in Judges. While the Chorus refers to events in Judges—to “The matchless Gideon” (280) and “Jephtha, who by argument,/ Not worse then by his shield and spear/ Defended Israel from the Ammonite” (283–5)—so does Dalila, who compares herself to Scriptural heroine “Jael, who with inhospitable guile/ Smote Sisera sleeping through the Temples nail’d” (989–90).23 The Chorus and Dalila alike arrogate authority to themselves by citing Judges, making it difficult to discern the legitimacy of such claims. And as the reorganization of the Judges narrative underscores the confusing and often illegible relationship between God’s will and the events depicted in the tragedy, it is increasingly difficult to determine the legitimacy of claims to divine inspiration as well. Moreover, Milton disrupts the correspondence between providence and the plot of the tragedy, the arrangement of actions and affects throughout Samson Agonistes. When we hear about certain events, we are deprived of any adequate understanding of their causality. We, along with the Philistines, Manoa, and the Chorus, are barred from Samson’s secret revelations by the Spirit, or at least his claims to such revelations: “they knew not/ That what I motion’d was of God; I knew/ From ­intimate impulse, and therefore urg’d/ The Marriage on; that by occasion hence/ I might begin Israel’s Deliverance,/ The work to which I was divinely call’d” (221–6).24 Manoa, in turn, directly echoes these lines when he attempts to understand Samson’s humiliation, his present state: “but thou didst plead/ Divine impulsion prompting how thou might’st/ Find some occasion to infest our Foes” (421–3).25 To make interpretive matters even more difficult, Samson, Manoa, and the Chorus are more than willing to offer alternative or speculative explanations for the actions, affects, and mores comprising the drama. Samson momentarily 21  Holy Bible [1611]. 22  Wittreich [1986], 150. 23  M1671, 79, 98. See Burns [1997], 27–46. 24  M1671, 77.

25  M1671, 83.



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abandons his claims to “intimate impulse” when he defends God’s providence: “Appoint not heavenly disposition, Father,/ Nothing of all these evils hath befall’n me/ But justly; I my self have brought them on,/ Sole Author I, sole cause” (373–6), accepting responsibility for his own actions but nevertheless invoking a vague notion of “heavenly disposition” which we are invited to imagine as distinct from God’s providence and election in strict theological terms.26 Samson’s “heavenly ­disposition” may point to God’s arrangement of worldly affairs, to God’s creation and preservation of the order of nature, but “disposition” also conjures anthropopathic assumptions about the divine mind or temperament. In yet another attempt to understand Samson’s state of mind, Manoa attributes his despair to “suggestions which proceed/ From anguish of the mind and humours black,/ That mingle with thy fancy” (599–601).27 When he invokes “heavenly disposition,” Samson implies that God is subject to passion in a comparable way. The most sustained treatment of agency and causality in the poem, however, comes from the Chorus, who assert that: Many are the sayings of the wise In antient and in modern books enroll’d; Extolling Patience as the truest fortitude; And to the bearing well of all calamities, All chances incident to mans frail life Consolatories writ With studied argument, and much perswasion sought Lenient of grief and anxious thought, But with th’ afflicted in his pangs thir sound Little prevails, or rather seems a tune, Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint, Unless he feel within Some sourse of consolation from above; Secret refreshings, that repair his strength, And fainting spirits uphold.  (652–66)28

Though the Chorus affirms that there is respite from anxiety in “consolation from above,” the connections between actions, affects, and mores that one might initially attribute to providence are obscured, just as the conditions of “Patience” and “consolation” remain unexplained. We are left instead with “Secret refreshings.” But “Secret refreshings,” inspirations of the order of the miraculous that are nevertheless unintelligible and unverifiable beyond direct experience, are withheld from the audience by definition. This “sourse of consolation from above” does not exactly help one to understand Samson’s situation, a situation that comprises the bulk of the plot of the poem. We encounter this difficulty as early as the Argument, where Milton outlines the plot of the poem only to reveal that Samson is “at length perswaded inwardly that this was from God” and is thus led “offstage” where the catastrophe occurs. For an audience seeking assurance, or an authoritative statement regarding Samson’s righteousness, or a definite explanation of the most ­intimate 26  M1671, 81.

27  M1671, 88.

28  M1671, 89–90.

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workings of the Holy Spirit in human history, even the grammar of the phrase “perswaded inwardly that this was from God” troubles necessity, probability, and verisimilitude in the tragedy. In no sense is it clear that God is the source of this persuasion. Nor is God necessarily the agent of the persuasion. Samson, rather, is merely “perswaded inwardly that this was from God”—an operation that might as easily refer to his human capacity to convince himself or to his membership in an interpretive community which includes Manoa and the Chorus, all of whom conclude through deliberation that both the decision to accompany the Philistine messenger peaceably as well as the catastrophe itself were inspired by God. The poem thus traces this “inward persuasion” across a series of encounters between Samson and his human interlocutors. This is not a demonstration of “Rational Theology” or “Progressive Revelation,” as Mary Ann Radzinowicz argues.29 There is no apparent authority for revelation to begin with. Moreover, “Secret refreshings,” neither actions, affects, mores, nor res, are thus alien to the constitutio or arrangement of the tragic plot. The invocation of “Secret refreshings” challenges Heinsius’ approach to tragedy and divinity, if not Aristotelian tragedy in general; such phenomena are crucial to the plot but are nevertheless inaccessible (and unrepresentable). They seem vital to the action but remain hidden. If they are indeed divine, they function like machinae or devices in the tragedy but are nevertheless of a different order than the types of dei ex machinis that resolve ancient tragedies or tragoediae sacrae. As such, “Secret refreshings” complicate assumptions concerning probability or necessity in tragedy because the terms of such phenomena are concealed. It is thus impossible to understand the plot or rerum constitutio in any precise philosophical way when crucial aspects are hidden from us. “Secret refreshings” seem to introduce an element of mystery. But this is not necessarily an endorsement of enthusiasm on Milton’s part, nor does he merely surrender philosophical precision to the illegibility of the Spirit. On the contrary, Milton tests the limits of tragedy, suspending us between two very different interpretations. If the “refreshings” are indeed divine interventions, devices involving a god that are nonetheless illegible to the dramatis personae and audiences alike, Milton suggests that it is impossible to comprehend human or divine agencies as a totality or to resolve human action without recourse to God. This is of course the most plausible interpretation for Milton and his contemporaries. But Milton also offers an alternative: if the “refreshings” are merely discursive, having no effect on the plot or its resolution beyond the fact that the dramatis personae believe they do, then Samson Agonistes does indeed offer its audiences an object lesson in immanent causality, adhering to Aristotelian standards concerning devices and dei ex machinis as Milton, intensifying Heinsius’ depiction of Scripture in Herodes Infanticida, delivers a harrowing vision of Judges without God. Again, it is ultimately unclear whether Milton introduces God via “Secret refreshings” out of necessity or whether he eschews any machina whatsoever. When Samson assures the Chorus, just prior to the solutio, to “Be of good courage, I begin to feel/ Some rouzing motions in me which dispose/ To something extraordinary my thoughts” (1381–3), his is an 29  See Radzinowicz [1978], 269–312.



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ambiguous statement that does not necessarily follow from the earlier Choral description of “consolation from above.” Moreover, Milton leaves it to the reader, auditor, or participant in the tragedy to discern whether and how Samson’s late claim to “rouzing motions” follows from the Chorus’ protracted description of God’s inspiration in lines 1268–96, culminating in the celebration of patience, “more oft the exercise/ Of Saints, the trial of thir fortitude,/ Making them each his own Deliverer” (1287–9).30 It is left to the reader to determine whether Milton introduces a deus ex machina at all. It is in this sense that Milton exploits those Reformed treatments of tragedy to which I’ve referred across Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World. Rather than make it explicit to the audience, he asks his readership to decide whether or not it is necessary to supplement the immanent causal relationships among the actions, affects, and mores depicted in Samson Agonistes with God’s inspiration. For a reader versed in tragedy, whether or not God is necessary to understand the chain of events or the unity of action emerges as a problem rather than a given. Moreover, the stakes are different for Milton than for Aristotle. If the plot of tragedy is indeed the province of probability or necessity, and all unnecessary, superfluous, or unrelated causes and effects should be relegated to the status of adornment, save for in the most exceptional cases, it becomes quite difficult to locate God in the work without posing serious theological problems. If God is introduced via “Secret refreshings,” as a device in the complication of the plot as given by the Chorus, then it is entirely necessary to render God in exceptional terms in order to understand the universal or generic situation depicted in Samson’s plight. In one sense, this is proof of Heinsius’ claim that nothing is as common as a device involving a god because, in effect, Milton asks us to consider how God treats each one of his elect exceptionally, steeling them against the traumas of human experience.31 Samson is only a generic “type” insofar as he shares this with every other human being—that is, his despair and experience of desertion that can only be alleviated by God, a situation that certainly complicates any easy typological relationship between Samson and Jesus. If Samson Agonistes is to remain an exemplary tragedy, if one is to accord the “Secret refreshings” to God’s providence and justification, then the “appearance” of such concealed phenomena in the solution must be entirely necessary to the plot; they are “spectacular” phenomena in the technical sense Heinsius explored insofar as they confound the audience and necessarily obscure probable or necessary causality in the poem. God’s providence, assurance, and the work of the Spirit, in other words, cannot be merely ornamental. For Milton, to depict God ornamentally risks idolatry. Thus, unless we accept that the “Secret refreshings” are necessary or probable but nonetheless exceptional interventions by God on behalf of man, then they must be of the same order as the other actions and affects, causes and effects, that comprise the plot. In other words, if Samson Agonistes is to remain an Aristotelian tragedy on the model described by 30  M1671, 106–7. 31 For a recent treatment of election and justification in Milton’s oeuvre, see Fallon [2007], 182–263.

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Heinsius, and if the “Secret refreshings” are not accorded a special status as machinae or devices involving God’s special grace and revelation, then Milton perverts the meaning of Heinsius’ statement entirely: nothing is as common as a device involving a god—not because of the lackluster skills of the majority of tragedians, but because devices involving God are immanent to the drama of the play and are thus not “special” or “exceptional” at all. It is as if Milton gives us several distinct ways to read Samson Agonistes as an Aristotelian tragedy, one of which is to affirm God’s special and exceptional interest in his elect (which complicates our understanding of causality as well as the consistency of the plot), another of which is to affirm just how “common” God is, in the sense that it comprises all of the immanent actions and affects across the drama—a vision of God that approaches monism. The possibility still remains, of course, that Samson Agonistes is not an Aristotelian tragedy at all and that Milton uses the apparatus of Aristotelian t­ ragedy to draw attention to his deviations from the model. In this sense, it is as if he borrows the philosophical precision from the commentary tradition—working in the tradition of Pareus, Castelvetro, Heinsius, and company—only to produce a truly Christian tragedy where the consistency of the plot is much less important than God’s special revelation and the terms of Samson’s inspiration. This remains an option to the end of the work. Even in this case, however, Samson Agonistes occupies a precarious place in this tradition insofar as Milton employs tragedy to complicate faith and certainty. With this theological history of tragedy in mind, it is possible to read Samson Agonistes at two extremes: as a faithful work in which God intervenes ­imperceptibly on behalf of his elect or as a depiction of a Scriptural world without divine intervention in which human actions and affects are themselves constitutive of “divinity,” if the latter term retains any meaning. Aristotle and his Reformed interlocutors, particularly Heinsius, showcase the philosophical resources of tragedy and their import to theology; Milton, in turn, recognizes this while refusing to fully endorse the Poetics or to discard it. It is a valuable reference through which Milton questions what one can or cannot know about God and its agencies in human history. Milton’s experimental approach to tragedy is all the more suggestive when we consider his Restoration contemporaries—poets and theologians alike—who employ tragedy, and the Poetics in particular, to communicate their assurance in form and providence alike. In A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will (1675), for instance, the Puritan Peter Sterry delivers a confident account of God’s providence informed directly by Aristotle’s Poetics.32 Describing God as a “skilful Poet,” Sterry emphasizes how his creation, “his Poem,” proceeds according to necessity—that is, how “the great Chain” of events leading to the “final Catastrophe” unfolds according to a plan that is apparent to careful readers.33 Sterry directs our attention to God’s glorious “conduct and government” of the plot, attending to the rerum constitutio, the total organization of actions and affects in “which the chief beauty of the whole Work is plac’d (from which arise the greatest Consequences, 32  Wallace [2011], 51–85; Matar [1992], 310–19; Sterry [1968], 93–5, 110–11. 33  Sterry [1675], 16.



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together with the perfection and praise of the whole piece).”34 Sterry does not merely invoke a familiar theatrum mundi trope here. As he turns to the treatment of tragedy in the Poetics, rather, Sterry recruits Aristotle’s powerful determinist account of Creation to his discussion of will and salvation, foregrounding plot and the unity of action at the expense of naïve notions of will or “character.” Exhorting his audience to recognize God’s providence in nature as well as salvation, Sterry refuses to accept that any aspect of Creation “should be derived from a meer Contingency, which hath no coherence with any antecedent part, which receiveth no force from any thing of any reason, proportion, or order in the whole, which hath no place nor form in the design of the Poet.”35 An acute reader of poetry and poetics, his approach to plot in A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will is markedly Aristotelian, undoubtedly reflecting his familiarity with the tradition of Reformation poetics that emphasizes “design” and maintains poetry’s affiliation with “reason, proportion, or order.”36 And while he does not mention tragedy per se, Sterry nevertheless draws primarily from Aristotle’s comments on tragic plot and recognition when he discusses human agency in salvation: “A Poetical History,” by which Sterry certainly means a poetic plot or fabula: hath this, as a chief rule, for the contrivance of it, upon which all its Graces and Beauties depend. That persons and things be carried to the utmost extremity, into a state where they seem altogether uncapable of any return to Beauty or Bliss: That then by just degrees of harmonious proportions, they be raised again to a state of highest Joy and Glory.37

In this sense Sterry paraphrases Aristotle’s description of the “well-made plot” in Poetics 1453a.7–9 that represents the fall of ordinary men caused “not through evil and depravity, but through some kind of error.” These are not men “preeminent in virtue and justice,” nor is their situation personal—that is to say, they require salvation not only because of what Aristotle calls “evil and depravity” [κακίαν καὶ μοχθηρίαν], not only because of individual decisions or inflections of the will, but (to the letter) “δι᾿ ἁμαρτίαν τινά”: “because of some kind of sin.”38 Collating Benedictus Arias Montanus’ interlinear Greek Testament with the Poetics, Sterry translates ἁμαρτία as “sin” immediately before he invokes plot.39 Sterry duly c­ apitalizes on the theological implications of peripeteia, tacitly revisiting Martin Bucer’s 1550 comments on tragedy and form. The “plot” of human salvation is thus complex, involving a fall precipitated by ἁμαρτία as well as a reversal: salvation. This, Sterry claims, is evident in “the Work of God in Creation, and contrivance from the beginning to the end,” a work that may accurately be called poetry and a Creation that may accurately be called the “ποίημα τοῦ θεοῦ, God᾽s Poem.”40 34  Sterry [1675], 16. 35  Sterry [1675], 16. 36  Sterry evidently employed poetry to great effect in his sermons and devotional works. N. I. Matar, for instance, illustrates his familiarity with John Donne as well as with Neoplatonic visions of L’Ovide moralisé that persist in the Restoration period. See Matar, “John Donne, Peter Sterry and the Ars Moriendi” [1991], 55–70; “Peter Sterry and the Puritan Defense of Ovid in Restoration England” [1991], 110–21. 37  Sterry [1675], 179. 38  AP, 70–1. 39  Sterry [1675], 178. 40  Sterry [1675], 179.

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Catastrophe: Conclusion

Sterry argues that nature (which “seemeth to be altogether Divine,” acknowledging the importance of imitation or mimesis in the Poetics) might thus appear to us as a totality, as a total work of art in which we recognize ourselves and our limitations. By apprehending “God’s Poem” as such, he claims, we realize how God “bindeth up all with an harmonious Order into an exact Unity; which conveyeth things down by a gradual descent to the lowest Depths, and deepest Darknesses; then bringeth them up again to the highest point of all most flourishing Felicities, opening the beginning in the end, espousing the end to the beginning.”41 The solution to this plot, in which mankind is given over to sin and damnation, lies in the events themselves, in Christ’s Incarnation. For Sterry, the exemplary tragic recognition occurs when we acknowledge Christ’s humanity and divinity. “This is that which Aristotle in his Discourse of Poetry, commendeth to us as the most artful and surprising untying of the knot, Διά ἀνάγνωσιν, or by a discovery,” Sterry claims; “This is that which Jesus Christ pointeth at in himself, who is the Wisdom of God; The manifold Wisdom of God, in whom all the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge lie hid, in whom all the Divine contrivances are formed and perfected. What will you say, when you shall see the Son of Man return there, where he was at first.”42 Sterry employs the Poetics to communicate the necessity of God’s providence, urging his audiences to recognize Christ’s agency in the tragic plot to which we bear witness as spectators and participants. The error or ἁμαρτία is ours; the contrivances or machines by which we are saved are the Incarnation and Christ’s imminent return. Our human agency lies primarily in recognition. Although Samson Agonistes is more familiar to us as a tragedy, Milton nonetheless eschews Sterry’s more familiar tragic vocabulary. More importantly, he declines Sterry’s confident account of faith or agency. As he draws our attention to a Reformation poetics in which tragedy and philosophy are so often inextricable, Milton rejects Sterry’s certainty, posing instead a series of formal and theological problems in tragic relief. Samson Agonistes thus bridges the gap between Reformation and Enlightenment, at once at home among the early modern tragoedia sacra and Reformed poetics in which tragedy emerges as a theological resource and among more modern poetic and philosophical works—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Theologische Jugendschriften, for instance, or the more prominent Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807)—in which tragedy marks the site at which one troubles easy distinctions between sacred and profane agencies, between the human and the divine.

41  Sterry [1675], 179 [my emphasis].

42  Sterry [1675], 179 [original emphasis].

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264 Bibliography Florio, John. A Worlde of Wordes, ed. Hermann W. Haller (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2013). Foxe, John. Le Triomphe de Iesus Christ, trans. Jacques Bienvenu (Geneva: Jean Bonnefoy, 1562). Foxe, John. Actes and Monuments, Volumes I and II, Fourth Edition (London: John Day, 1583). Fracastoro, Girolamo. Latin Poetry, trans. James Gardner (Cambridge, Massachusetts; and London: Harvard University Press, 2013). Fuller, Thomas. Abel redevivus, or, The dead yet speaking (London: Thomas Brudenell, 1651). Galfridus, Anglicus. Ortus vocabuloru[m] (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1532). Gast, Hiob. Expostulatio Iustitiae cum Mundo, à Belial Instigatio (Strasburg: [Johann Herwagen], 1525). The Geneva Bible: 1560 Edition (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007). The Geneva Bible: The Annotated New Testament 1602 Edition, ed. Gerald  T.  Sheppard (Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1989). Gentili, Alberico. De Legationibus Libri Tres (London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1585). Gentili, Alberico. De Jure Belli Commentationes Tres (London: apud Iohannem Wolfium, expensis I.C.M., 1589). Gentili, Alberico. De Iure Belli Libri III (Hanoviae: Guilielmus Antonius, 1599). Gentili, Alberico. Disputationes Duae (Hanoviae: Guilielmus Antonius, 1599). Gentili, Alberico. De Legationibus Libri Tres, trans. Gordon J. Laing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1924). Gentili, Alberico. De Iure Belli Libri Tres [1612], trans. John C. Rolfe, Volume II (Oxford and London: Clarendon Press and Humphrey Milford, 1933). Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe (London and New York: Penguin, 1966). Gomarus, Franciscus. Accort vande Recht-sinnige Leere der Voorsienicheyt Gods (Delft: Ian Andriesz, 1613). Gomarus, Franciscus. “Conciliatio Doctrinae Orthodoxae Providentia Dei,” Francisci Gomari Brugensis Operum, Part III (Amsterdam: Joannis Janssonii, 1644). Gosson, Stephen. “Playes Confuted in Five Actions,” Markets of Bawdrie: The Dramatic Criticism of Stephen Gosson, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974). Gregory of Nazianzen. La Passion du Christ: Tragédie, ed. and trans. André Tuiler (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1969). Grimald, Nicholas. Christus Redivivus, The Life and Poems of Nicholas Grimald, ed. and trans. L.R. Merrill ([Hamden, Connecticut]: Archon, 1969). Grotius, Hugo, ed. and trans. Excerpta ex Tragoediis et Comoediis Graaecis tum quae exstant, tum quae perierunt (Paris: Nicholaus Buon, 1626). Heinsius, Daniel. In Cruentum Christi Sacrificium, Sive Domini Passionem, Homilia (Leiden: Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1613). Heinsius, Daniel. In Theophania Sive Domini Natalem, Homilia (Leiden: Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1613). Heinsius, Daniel. De praestantia ac dignitate historiae oratio (Amsterdam: Ludovicum Elzevirum, 1614). Heinsius, Daniel. The Mirrour of Humilitie: Or, Two eloquent and acute Discourses upon the Nativitie and Passion of Christ, full of divine and excellent Meditations and Sentences, trans. John Harmar (London: Bernard Alsop, 1618).

Bibliography 265 Heinsius, Daniel. Epistola, Qua Dissertationi D. Balsaci ad Heroden Infanticidam, respondetur, ed. Marcus Zuerius Boxhornius (Leiden: Elzevier, 1636). Heinsius, Daniel. “Homilia in locum Johannis Cap. XVII. v. ix,” Orationum Editio Nova, Prioribus Auctior, ed. Nicholas Heinsius (Amsterdam: Ex Officina Elzeviriana, 1657). Heinsius, Daniel. The Value of History, trans. George W. Robinson (Cambridge, Massachusetts: [Privately Printed], 1943). Heinsius, Daniel. “Hymnus oft Lof-Sanck van Bacchus,” Bacchus en Christus: Twee Lofzangen van Daniel Heinsius, ed. L.P. Rank, J.D.P. Warners, and F.L. Zwaan (Zwolle: W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink, 1965). Heliodorus. An Aethiopian historie written in Greeke by Heliodorus, trans. Thomas Underdown (London: Henry Wykes, for Fraunces Coldocke, 1569). Heliodorus, Heliodori Aethiopicorum Libri X, trans. Stanislaus Warschewiczki, ed. Hieronymus Commelinus ([Heidelberg]: Hieronymus Commelinus, 1596). The Holy Bible, conteyning the Old Testament, and the New (Imprinted at London: By Robert Barker . . . , 1611). Honerdus, Rochus. Thamara Tragoedia (Leiden: Ex Officina Ioannis Patij, Academiae Typographi, 1611). Horace. Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Accedunt nunc Danielis Heinsii De Satyra Horatiana Libri duo, in quibus totum Poëtae institutim & genius expenditure, ed. Daniel Heinsius (Leiden: Elzevir, 1629). Horace. “Ars Poetica,” Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. H.  Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, Massachusetts; and London: Harvard University Press, 1926). Hyperius, Andreas. The Practise of preaching, otherwise called the Pathway to the Pulpet, trans. John Ludham (London: Thomas East, 1577). Hyperius, Andreas. De theologo, seu de ratione studii theologici, libri IIII [1556] (Basel: Oporinus, 1582). Iamblichus. De Vita Pythagorae, & Protrepticae orationes ad Philosophiam Lib. II, trans. Johannes Arcerius (Franeker: Aegidius Radaeus, 1598). Iamblichus. On the Pythagorean Life, trans. Gillian Clark (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989). Index Auctorum et librorum prohibitorum, qui ab officio sanctae Romanae Inquisitionis caveri ab omnibus caveri mandantur (Rome: Antonium Bladum, 1559). Index Auctorum, et Librorum, qui ab Officio Sanctae Rom. et Universalis Inquisitionis caveri ab omnibus et singulis in universa Christiana Republica mandantur, sub censuris contra legentes, vel tententes libros prohibitos (Rome: Antonius Bladus, 1559). Jerome. Commentariorum In Epistolam Beati Pauli Ad Titum Liber Unus, Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina 26, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: 1845). Jerome. St. Jerome’s Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon, trans. Thomas P. Scheck (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). Julian. The Works of the Emperor Julian, trans. Wilmer Cave Wright, Volume III (London and New York: William Heinemann and G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1923). Junius, Franciscus. Apocalypsis  S.  Ioannis Apostoli et Evangelistae, Methodica Analysi Argumentorum, notisque breuibus ad rerum intelligentiam et Catholicae ac Christianae Ecclesiae historiam pertinentibus illustrata (Heidelberg: Hieronymus Commelinus, 1591). Koester, Craig  R., ed. and trans. Revelation: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven, Connecticut; and London: Yale University Press, 2014). Lucretius. On the Nature of Things, trans. W.H.D. Rouse, rev. Martin F. Smith (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1924).

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288 Bibliography Young, Karl. “An Elizabethan Defence of the Academic Stage,” Shakespeare Studies by Members of the Department of English of the University of Wisconsin (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1916), 103–24. Young, Karl. “William Gager’s Defence of the Academic Stage,” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters 18.2 (1916): 593–638. Zanobi, Alessandra. Seneca’s Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Zurcher, Andrew. “Milton on Tragedy: Law, Hypallage, and Participation,” Young Milton: The Emerging Author, 1620–1642, ed. Edward Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 182–205.

Index accommodation  39, 78–80, 87–8, 97–100, 106–17, 121, 129–30, 148–50, 153–4, 236–9 accommodation, God as a poet  254–6 acting and stage–playing  124, 140–2, 145–53, 158–63, 191–2, see also Aristotle, Poetics, spectacle and spectacle Adorno, Theodor W.  3 Aeschylus  18–19, 23–4, 170–1, 190–1, 208 affect  10–13, 26–7, 30–1, 74–5, 104, 139–42, 153, 190–1, 200–2, 227–39, 248–9 affect, awe  26, 31, 36, 171–2, see also affect, wonder affect, enthusiasm  227–8 affect, fear or horror  12–13, 26–7, 30–1, 34–7, 89–90, 104–5, 111–14, 122–3, 139–40, 144–6, 171–2, 181, 184–6, 195–6, 202–6, 208–9, 227–30, 235–9 affect, pity and compassion  12–13, 26, 29–30, 34–7, 89–90, 96–7, 104–5, 114, 122–3, 139–42, 203–4, 208–9, 227–8 affect, wonder  101, 144–6, 148, 171–3, 184–6, 190–1, 195–6, 228–30, 235–8, see also affect, awe Alcázar, Luis de  48, 70–2, 74 Alighieri, Dante  97–100 allegory  78–80, 88–9 Anabaptists 62–3 anachronism 95–7 Antichrist  51–3, 55–6, 59–63, 65–70, 74–5 Antigone  20–1, 23–4 Apollinaris 217–19 Aquinas, Thomas  128, 136–7, 142–3 Aristophanes 23 Aristotle  4–5, 7–8, 12–13, 21–2, 32, 45, 81–3, 113, 121–3, 129–30, 137–8, 144, 179, 184–6, 223–5, 234–5 [Aristotle], De Mundo 179–83 Aristotle, Metaphysics  113, 171–2, 179, 183–4, 195–6, 246 Aristotle, Organon  4–5, 7–8, 32–4, 122–3, 138–42 Aristotle, Poetics  4–5, 7–8, 12–13, 18–19, 21–2, 31–8, 81–2, 89–90, 93–7, 100–5, 110–11, 113–17, 121–5, 130–1, 133, 136, 138–87, 190–5, 226–30, 244–5, 254–5 Aristotle, Poetics, distinction between tragedy and history  7–8, 12–13, 31, 35–6, 48, 102–3, 133, 143–4, 192–3, 195–6 Aristotle, Poetics, spectacle  12–13, 36–7, 39–40, 104–5, 110–11, 114–15, 140–2, 144–9, 190–1, 194–6, 244–5

Aristotle, Poetics, plot  12–13, 31, 36, 38, 55–6, 102–3, 114–17, 171–2, 184–6, 190–1, 193–6 Aristotle, Politics  137–8, 144, 150–1, 183–4, 227–8 Aristotle, Rhetoric  21–2, 33–4, 124, 133–40, 142–9, 153–4, 183–4, 187–8 Aristotle, varieties of Aristotelianism  8–9, 33–6, 122–3, 133–40, 142–3, 170–1, 183–6, 243–4 Arminian Controversy  49, 167–70, 172–7, 179–81, 206 Arminius, Jacobus  169–76 Arnold, Elias  80 arts of expression (elegance and eloquence)  12–13, 15–16, 19–20, 23–4, 30–1, 87–8, 107–8, 130–1, 134–5, 184, 207–8, 216–18 Ascham, Roger  29–30, 122–3 Athens  22, 207–10, 225–6 audience  8–9, 12–13, 25, 37, 41, 51–2, 57–9, 79–80, 104–10, 113–17, 126–7, 129–30, 149–51, 153–4, 161, 190–1, see also accommodation Augustine  74–5, 128, 215–16 Averroës   33–6, 142–3, 184 Babylon  51–2, 62–3, 65, 68–9, 74–5 Bade, Josse  14–15, 19–20 Bale, John  47–8, 62 Balmes, Abram de  33–4 Balzac, Jean Louis Guez de  200–1, 243–4 baptism 228–30 Barthelemy de Loches [Bartolomaeus], Nicolas  29–31, 57, 214–15 Basil of Seleucia  204–5 Béda, Noel  19–20 Beneficio di Cristo, Il [Benedetto Fontanini Da Mantova]  83, 111–13 Bernays, Jacob  227–8 Betuleius, Xystus [Sixt Birck]  29–30, 74 Bèze, Theodore de [Beza]  38, 47–8, 78–9, 174–5, 212–13 Bibliander, Theodore  46–7 Billings, Joshua  6–7 Binns, J. W.  120–1, 142–3, 150–1 Boccaccio, Giovanni  96–7 Bologna  83–4, 91 Brightman, Thomas  46–7 Brylinger, Nicholaus  29–30 Bucer, Martin  10–14, 31, 38, 46–7, 58–61, 68–9, 84, 88, 93–4, 126

290 Index Buchanan, George  29–30, 47–8, 93–4, 170–1, 187–8, 243–4 Bullinger, Heinrich  46–8, 58–9 Buonarroti, Michelangelo  3–5

Donatus, Aelius  17–20, 51 Dryden, John  243–4 dumb shows  75–6, 161–2 Dutch Republic  167–70, 173–7

Calvin, Jean  45–7, 49, 68–9, 78–9, 82, 86–8, 134–5, 180–1 Cambridge University  29–30, 57–8, 122–3, 126 Camerarius, Joachim  22–3, 26–7, 140–2 Capito, Wolfgang  58–9, 68–9 Caponetto, Salvatore  59–60, 88 Caro, Annibal  91–3 Case, John  126–8, 136–8 Castelvetro, Giacomo  149 Castelvetro, Lodovico  3–5, 8–9, 39, 41, 81–117, 149, 170–1, 190–1, 235–6 Castelvetro, Lodovico, Poetica (1570)  81–3, 89–90, 93–106, 110–17, 235–6 Castelvetro, Lodovico, Poetica (1576)  82, 93–5, 97–8, 111–12 character [persona]  11–13, 26–7, 36, 48, 50–1, 95–6, 102, 104, 106, 110–11, 113, 117, 153, 184–6, 188–9, 200–1, 254–5 Chaucer, Geoffrey  16–17 Cheke, Henry  98 Cheke, Sir John  29–30, 122–3 chorus  15–16, 19–20, 26–7, 51–2, 63–4, 75–6, 179 Christ  45, 55–6, 60–4, 68–9, 71–2, 93–4, 98–9, 106–8, 129–30, 173–5, 177–8, 198–200, 205, 221, 228–30, see also Jesus Christ, never laughed  205, 235–6 Christ, Passion  30–1, 85–6, 111–12, 116, 169–70, 177–8, 187–8, 221–2 Chytraeus, David  46–7 Cicero  23–4, 32, 106–7, 138–9, 146–7, 196–7 Clement of Alexandria  16, 169–70, 207, 209–12, 215–16, 219–25, 232–3, 235–7 Colladon, Nicolas  46–7, 74–5 comedy  11, 16–18, 22, 53, 61, 184–8 Constantine  62–3, 67 Contarini, Gasparo  84–5 contingency  34–5, 254–5, see also plot, episodic Contra–Remonstrance (1611)  175–6 Counter–Remonstrants  175–7, 179–81, 206 Cranmer, Thomas  29–30, 55–6, 60–1 credibility  102–4, 111, 115–16 Cummings, Brian  116

Eden, Kathy  4–5, 124–5 election  59, 114–15, 169–70, 173–8, 250–1 Elizabeth I  126, 132 enactment  36–7, 124–6, 144–8, 159–60, see also acting and stage–playing equivocation  132, see also mendacia Erasmus, Desiderius  14–21, 32, 82, 84, 106–10, 183–4, 189–90, 196–7, 211–13 Euripides  12–16, 20, 23–5, 28, 95–6, 136–7, 153–4, 196–7, 208, 214–15 Euripides, Andromache  28, 170–1 Euripides, Bacchae 221–2 Euripides, Hecuba  14–15, 19–20, 28 Euripides, Ion 197–8 Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis 14–15 Euripides, Medea 153 Euripides, Orestes 28 Euripides, Phoenissae 23–5 Eusebius of Caesarea  215–16 Evanthius 68 Ezekiel, Exagogue 220–1

De Casibus tradition  16–17, 26–7, 75–7, 121 deception  5, see also mendacia dénouement, see plot, loosing (solutio) Dethick, Henry  120–1 Deus ex machina, see machine device, see machine dialectic  4–5, 7–8, 32–3, 103–10, 113, 130–1, 133, 137–9, 142–3, 159, 184, 219–20, 223 dialectic, syllogism  33–5, 103–6, 111, 114, 138–40, 159 Donation of Constantine  56

faith  10–11, 22, 57–9, 64, 78–9, 84–6, 111–13, 115–17, 133, 138–9, 177–8, 198–9, 206, 215–16, 218–20, 237–8 Farel, Guillaume  68–9 Feingold, Mordechai  133–6, 142–3 Flacius Illyricus, Matthias  62 Fontanini Da Mantova, Benedetto, see Beneficio di Cristo, Il forensic tragedy  4–5, 20, 103–4, 122–4, 130–1, 138–9, 153–6, 158–63, see also credibility, dialectic, verisimilitude Foxe, John  8–9, 46–7, 61–5, 80, 134–5 Fracastoro, Giralomo  101 free will  58–9, 173–4 Furies (Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone)  200–1, 243–4 Gager, William  123–8, 135–6, 151–2 Gardiner, Stephen  57–8 Gascoigne, George  162 Gast, Hiob  58–9 Gentili, Alberico  39–40, 123–32, 142–5, 148–51, 157–8 God as a philosophical deity  113–14, 179–83, see also accommodation Gomarus, Franciscus  49–50, 169–70, 174–6, 179–81 Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex (Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton)  75–7, 162 Gorgias 5 Gosson, Stephen  120–1 Green, Lawrence D.  133 Gregory of Nazianzen  30–1, 214–15, 243–4

Index Grillenzoni, Giovanni  84–7 Grimald, Nicholas  30–1, 47–8 Grotius, Hugo  34–5, 168, 176–7, 211–12, 243–4 Grund, Gary R.  29–30 Gwinne, Matthew  154–6, 158–9 habits (mores)  12–13, 36, 113–14, 143, 173–4, 188–9 hamartia (ἁμαρτία), sin or error  89–90, 114, 207, 219–20, 236–7, 255–6 Hart, John  135–7 heathen language and philosophy  49–51, 87, 200–1, 213–15, 219–25 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich  6–8, 256 Heidelberg Catechism  46–7, 134–5 Heinsius, Daniel  8–9, 17–18, 34–5, 40, 167–206, 211–12, 233–4, 243–7, 252–3 Heinsius, Daniel—De Tragoediae Constitutione (1611/1641)  8–9, 34–5, 40, 167–8, 170–2, 183–97, 243–8, 252–3 Heinsius, Daniel—De utilitate quae e lectione tragoediarum percipitur  18–19, 169–70 Heinsius, Daniel—Herodes Infanticida (1632)  8–9, 40, 167–70, 173, 191–2, 197–206, 243–6 Heliodorus 130–1 Hermannus Alemannus  33–4 Herod  30–1, 197–202 Herrick, Marvin T.  51–2, 122–3 history  36, 60–2, 67–8, 70–2, 74, 100–3, 143–4, 184–6, 195–6 Hölderlin, Friedrich  6–7 Homer  18–19, 233 Horace  15–16, 18–19, 32, 151–2, 169–70, 184–6, 245 Hoxby, Blair  6–8 Hunnius, Aegidius  49 Hus, Jan  61, 67–9, 74–5 Hutson, Lorna  4–5 Hyperius, Andreas  78–80, 134–5, 137–8 Iamblichus  183–4, 233–5 Index Librorum Prohibitorum  82, 91 invention  91, 100–1, 103–4, 106–8 irrationality  36–7, 194–5, 247–8 Jacob Schöpper  29–30 Jerome of Prague  61, 67–9, 74–5 Jesuits  38, 49, 132, 134–5 Jesus  93–4, 207–9, 222–37, 247 Jewel, John  133 John the Baptist  30–3, 188–9, 231, 233 Julian the Apostate  216–19 Junius, Franciscus  46–7 justification  58–9, 84, 88–9, 111–17, 253–4 katharsis  18–19, 26, 32–3, 36–7, 89–90, 122–3, 128–9, 184–6, 208–9, 227–39 katharsis, as expiatio 227–31

291

katharsis, as lustratio 227–39 katharsis, as trial  219–20, 237–9 Kinwelmersh, Francis  162 Kraye, Jill  179 Lazarus, Micha  32, 121–2 Lefèvre d’Étaples, Jacques  19–20 Leiden University  168, 173–4, 176–7, 183 Lewis, Rhodri  156–7 Lombardi, Bartolomeo  81–2 Lucretius 181 Luther, Martin  21–2, 45–7, 53, 55–6, 58–9, 68–9, 82, 84, 208–9 Lydgate, John  16–17 machine  37, 115–16, 172–3, 194–201, 245–8, 252–3, see also spectacle Maggi, Vincenzo  81–2 Mantino, Jacob  33–4 Manuzio, Aldo  14–15 Marlorat, Augustin  46–7 martyrs and martyrology  69–70, 197–8, 202, 204–5, 239 Marx, Karl  208–9 Melanchthon, Philipp  16, 21–8, 39, 46–7, 53, 58–9, 68–9, 82, 84, 87–9, 101, 108–10, 119, 126, 129–30, 159 Melanchthon, Philipp—Cohortatio ad Legendas Tragoedias et Comoedias 22–7 Melanchthon, Philipp—Loci Communes Theologici  82, 88, 91 Melanchthon, Philipp—De Ecclesiae Auctoritate et de Veterum Scriptis Libellus  88–90, 97 Menander 210–15 mendacia  119, 123–4, 127–32, 154–7 meter and measure  14–15, 22, 32–3, 36–7, 100–1, 150–3, 184–6, 211–12, 214–15, 217–18, 244–5 Meyer, Sebastian  46–7 Milton, John  9–10, 40, 45, 51, 207–39, 243–56 Milton, John—De Doctrina Christiana  228–30, 237–9, 246 Milton, John—Paradise Regain’d 9–10, 207–10, 222–7, 230–7 Milton, John—Samson Agonistes 9–10, 207–8, 228–30, 232–3, 237–9, 243–54 Milton, John—Trinity Manuscript  243–4 mimesis  12–13, 35–6, 66, 77–8, 96, 100–1, 122–3, 128–9, 144–5, 159–60, 162, 184–8, 208–9, 226–7, 256 Minturno, Antonio  51–2, 227–8 miracles  37–8, 115–16, 180–1, 187–8, 194, 200–1, 203–6, 245–7, 251–2 Modena  82–8, 90–3, 149 Modenese Accademia  83–4, 86–8, 111–12 Mongini, Guido  83, 85–6, 94–5 More, Thomas  16 Morone, Giovanni  84–7, 90–1

292 Index Musculus, Wolfgang  78–9 music, in relation to tragedy  10, 34–7, 50–2, 64, 66, 68–9, 73–6, 150–3, 170–1, 191–2, 208–9, 225, 227–8, 244–5, see also spectacle Mussato, Albertino  16–17 Naogeorgus, Thomas [Thomas Kirchmeyer]  8–9, 29–30, 53–8 Naogeorgus, Thomas—Pammachius 8–9, 29–30, 38, 46–7, 55–6, 58–60, 64, 80, 189–90 Navarre, Marguerite de  93–4 necessity  4–8, 12–13, 20, 28, 31, 35–6, 74–5, 93–4, 101–2, 133, 167–72, 180–7, 192–4, 246–9 Negri, Francesco  8–9, 46–7, 58–61, 63, 69–70, 83, 98–100 Neoclassicism  6, 32, 41 Neoplatonism  100–1, 169–70, 181, 195–6, 220–2 Newton, Thomas  208 Nicodemism  94–5, 132, see also equivocation Northbrooke, John  120–1 Norton, Thomas, see Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex Ochino, Bernardino  60–1, 84–6, 91 Oecolampadius, Johannes  68–9, 88 Oedipus  93–4, 119–20, 187, 231 Old Comedy  22–3, 184–6 Oporinus, Johannes  29–30, 53, 62 Oratio in Laudem Artis Poeticae, see Dethick, Henry Origen  50–1, 87 Oxford University  119–27, 131–6, 142–3, 154–6 Paccius, Alessandro [de’ Pazzi]  32, 145–6 painting  24–5, 117, 143–4, 184–6, 190–1 papacy  55–7, 59–60, 62–3, 67, 69–71, 89–91, 93–4, 97–8 Pareus, David  8–9, 38–9, 41, 45–80, 213–15, 243–4 Pareus, David—In Divinam Apocalypsin S. Apostoli et Evangelistae Johannis Commentarius  45–6, 50–1, 65–80 Parker, John  59–60 Parker, Matthew  57–8 Paul  59, 62–3, 98–9, 108, 210–19, 221 Peele, George  122–3 Pelagianism 174–5 Performance, see acting and stage–playing and spectacle peripeteia, see reversal (peripeteia) Peter Chrysologus  204–5 Petrarch, Francesco  91 Philo of Alexandria  232–3 philosophy  4–9, 12–13, 32–6, 102, 105–10, 133, 136–7, 170–1, 173, 179–80, 183–4,

186–7, 208–9, 213, 216–25, 233, 236–7, see also heathen language and philosophy Piccolomini, Alessandro  83–4, 119–20, 150–1 Plato  154–6, 169–70, 177–8, 183–4, 188–9, 194–6, 207, 217–18, 220–1, 225, 227–8, 233–6 Plautus  11, 20, 23, 154–6, 196–7 plot, fabula or muthos  34–7, 51–2, 74, 100–4, 115, 171–2, 184–9, 245, 254–5 plot, binding  55–6, 62–3, 194, 255 plot, catastrophe  17–20, 51–2, 56–8, 61, 64–5, 68–70, 107–8, 254–5 plot, complex  173–4, 193–4, 205–6 plot, dramatic unities  81–2, 192–4, 243–4 plot, epilogus  56–7, 73 plot, episodic  4–5, 105–6, 113–14, 122–3, 186, 192–4, 249–50, 253–4 plot, epitasis  17–20, 51–2, 68, 107–8 plot, loosing (solutio)  55–6, 62–3, 69–70, 194, 255 plot, prologus  17–18, 51–2, 73, 197–8 plot, protasis  17–20, 51–2, 68, 107–8 plot, simple  191–4 plot, single action, see totality plot, unity, see totality Plutarch  3, 5, 191–2 poetic fury  100–1 Pole, Reginald  84 Poliziano, Angelo  18–20 Pollard, Tanya  32, 51–2 Ponet, John  60–1 Porto, Francesco  84–5, 94–5 possibility  4–5, 20, 31, 34–6, 97, 101–6, 111, 115–16, 133, 186–8, 193–4, 196, 199–200, 248–9, see also credibility predestination  114–15, 167–8, 173–4, 177–8, see also election, reprobation preterism 70–2 probability  4–5, 34–6, 102–3, 122–3, 133, 144, 156–7, 167–8, 184–8, 190–1, 193–6, 247–9, see also verisimilitude Proclus 183–4 prophecy  48, 50–1, 66–7, 70–2, 152–3, 197–9, 204–5 providence  113–14, 180–2, 199–200, 239, 246–7, 249–50, 254–5 Prynne, William  120–1 Quintianus Stoa, Ioannes Franciscus  29–31, 46–7 Quintilian  32, 92 Quran  34–5, 112 Rainolds, John  8–9, 39–40, 119–63, 190–1 Rainolds, John—Th’overthrow of stage– playes  119–21, 127–8, 150–6 Rapin, René  243–4 recitation  41, 119–20, 124, 127, 145–8, 150–3, 159–60, 190–2, see also arts of expression (elegance and eloquence)

Index recognition  12–13, 34–6, 45–6, 55–6, 58–61, 64, 69–70, 89–90, 193–4, 224–5, 255–6 Remonstrance (1610)  175–6 Remonstrants 175–7 repetition 74–80 reprobation  10–11, 47–8, 52–3, 59, 64, 167–8, 173–8, see also election, predestination Revelation  8–9, 45–7, 50–75, 77–8, 80, 214–15 reversal (peripeteia)  12–13, 34–5, 64, 173–4, 193–4, 255 Rhetorica ad Herennium 106–7 Riccoboni, Antonio  32, 170–1 Robortello, Francesco  32, 81–2, 119–20, 140–2, 145–8, 150–2, 170–1, 227–8 Roman Inquisition  82, 87–8, 91 Rome  3–4, 59, 68–9, 74–5, 83–4, 111 Rymer, Thomas  41, 243–4 Sachs, Hans  47–8 Sackville, Thomas, see Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex” Sadoleto, Jacopo  86–7 Salmasius, Claude  200–1 Satan  55–6, 58–9, 61–3, 68–9, 92, 207–9, 225–7 Savonarola, Girolamo  32–3 Scaliger, Joseph Justus  49–51, 119–20, 168, 170–1 Scaliger, Julius Caesar  51–2, 142–3 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph  6–7 Schmidt, Dennis J.  6–7 Schmitt, Charles B.  134–5, 137–8 scholasticism 134–8 Schonaeus, Cornelius  74 Schöpper, Jacob  29–31 Scott, William  122–3 Scriverius, Petrus  168, 178 secularism 173 Selden, John  231 Seneca  12–13, 169–71, 188–9, 193–4 Seneca, Hercules Furens  193–4, 197–8 Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus 202–4 Seneca, Medea 152–3 Seneca, Thyestes 188–9 Shakespeare, William  39–40, 123–4, 154–63 Shakespeare, William—Hamlet 123–4, 154–63 Sidney, Sir Philip  77, 122–5 Sierhuis, Freya  175–6 Skinner, Quentin  4–5 Socinianism 174–5 Socrates of Constantinople  209–10, 215–19, 223 Sophocles  12–13, 23–7, 53, 95–6, 136–7, 187–90, 208 Sophocles, Ajax  26–7, 119–20, 170–1, 193–4, 197–8 Sophocles, Philoctetes  170–1, 199–200

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Sophocles, Women of Trachis [Trachiniae] 202–3 spectacle  12–13, 36–7, 39–40, 103–6, 110–11, 114–15, 121, 124, 128–31, 140–2, 144–9, 158–63, 170–1, 184–6, 190–1, 194–6, 244–5 spiritualism  84–6, 92–3 Sterry, Peter  254–6 Stiblinus, Gasparus  28 Stoicism  181, 225, 236–7 Stubbes, Phillip  120–1, 156–7 Synod of Dort (1618–19)  49, 176–7 Szondi, Peter  6–8 Tedeschi, John  13–14 Terence  22–3, 51–2, 61, 169–70, 188–9 Textor, Joannes Ravisius  59–60 thought (sententia)  20–5, 27, 36–7, 101, 140–2, 153, 184–6, 189–90, 208 Todrosi, Todros  33–4 totality  3–7, 35–8, 48, 102, 171–2, 184–6, 190–6, 204–5, 246–50, 252–6 tragedy, essential and non–essential parts of  110, 115, 124, 140–2, 144–5, 147–9, 151–4, 184–6, 188–92, 244–5 tragicomedy  30–1, 51–3, 61 Tragoedia Sacra  12–14, 29–31, 46–8, 50–1, 53–6, 74, 170–1, 243–5 Trevet, Nicholas  16–17 typology  77–80, 204–5 Ursinus, Zacharius  46–7, 49 Uyttenbogaert, Johannes  175–6 Valdés, Juan de  84–6, 90–1 Valla, Giorgio  32 Verardi, Marcellino  15–16 verisimilitude  4–5, 34–7, 101, 103, 110–11, 115–16, 122–3, 133, 142–3, 160, 184–8, 190–1, 193–6, 245, see also credibility, possibility, probability Vettori, Pietro [Victorius]  32, 81–2, 119–20, 138–42, 147–8, 150–1, 153, 170–1, 227–8 Virgil  22–3, 71–2 Vives, Juan–Luis  138–9, 153–4 Vossius, Gerardus Johannes  176–7, 195–6 Vulcanius, Bonaventura  168 Walsingham, Sir Francis  135–6 Watson, Thomas  20–1, 29–30, 47–8, 122–3 Weinberg, Bernard  32, 81–2, 94–5 White, Paul Whitfield  47–8, 57–8 Winshemius, Vitus  23–4, 202–3 Wittenberg University  21–4, 53, 149, 159 Wycliffites  62–3, 69–70, 74–5, 98 Xylander, Guilelmus  16, 28 Ziegler, Hieronymus  29–30 Zwingli, Huldrych  46–7, 58–9, 68–9, 84