Recommendations on Greek-Roman and Jacobean Drama

[ajvenigalla]

Dear Online-Literature:

In addition to my voracious reading of Shakespeare - a newfound sort of love - I've decided to read John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and maybe I'd read more of the Jacobean-Elizabethan dramas, and even the Greek/Roman dramas, in addition to the various novels, stories, poems I intend to read.

What would your recommendations be for me, a young college student, who's read no Greek drama, whose exposure to drama is centered around Shakespeare - which I'm glad to say I'd discovered a greater love for while reading the Henry IV plays?

What are some good translations of the Greek/Roman classics?

[OrphanPip]

Dear Online-Literature:

In addition to my voracious reading of Shakespeare - a newfound sort of love - I've decided to read John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and maybe I'd read more of the Jacobean-Elizabethan dramas, and even the Greek/Roman dramas, in addition to the various novels, stories, poems I intend to read.

What would your recommendations be for me, a young college student, who's read no Greek drama, whose exposure to drama is centered around Shakespeare - which I'm glad to say I'd discovered a greater love for while reading the Henry IV plays?

What are some good translations of the Greek/Roman classics?

Jacobean theatre tends to shine in the genre of city comedies like those or Ben Jonson. Shakespeare's later plays are technically Jacobean as well. You can also consider reading shakespeare's sometimes collaborator Middleton. If you want something bizarre you can read his A Game at Chess.

[Jackson Richardson]

What are some good translations of the Greek/Roman classics?

I'd be very interest to know as well.

The Duchess of Malfi is certainly my favourite non-Shkespeare.

Ben Jonson's The Alchemist is a highly regarded comedy and unlike Shakespeare's it is set in contemporary London.

[Chrysophrase]

An amazing Oxford scholar, Emma Smith, did a podcast called 'Not Shakespeare' (https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/not-shakespeare-elizabethan-and-jacobean-popular-theatre) about famous Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, I honestly cannot recommend it highly enough if you like learning about literature. And if you're not interested in the podcast itself, just look through the list of plays she covers, they're basically the most popular and influential plays of the time.

From my not-very-extensive experience, I'd say The Spanish Tragedy is definitely an important one (it influenced many Shakespeare plays including Hamlet), Doctor Faustus, and The Tamer Tam'd ('sequel' to The Taming of the Shrew)

Oh, and The Roaring Girl, it's a very non-traditional comedy about a woman who goes around dressed as a man and getting involved in duels and helping set up marriages, and fighting crime!

[sandy14]

Lysistrata will be a good read as will The Golden *** - great examples of Greek Comedy.

Andromanche and The Bacchae were enjoyable tragedies.

[Jackson Richardson]

I thought The Golden Donkey was a novel, not a play but I may be wrong. If this was a British website, there would be no problem with the spelling of the word for donkey. In British usage the equivalent word for the posterior is "arse".

[OrphanPip]

Yes when I read it it was a prose narrative but I suppose a play version could be out there, but I'm not familiar with it, it's also a Roman novel.

Sophocles is the prototypical Greek tragedian (Oedipus Tyranus, Antigone), with Aristophanes being the major comedian (Lysistrata being one of his better known).

If you are interested in obscure non-Shakespearean Elizabethan drama. You could delve into the archive of "True crime" plays which were popular at the time, one of the most widely available is Arden of Faversham. If you are interested in closet drama, they were mostly written by aristocratic people for either close friends or family performances, an interesting example is The Tragedy of Mariam, Fair Queen of the Jewry by Elizabeth Cary the Viscountess Falkland. It is a rare treatment of a female Jewish heroine and also an Elizabethan play by a Catholic, also the first English language play published by a woman.

[sandy14]

The Globe put it on the stage back in 2002. It was incredibly funny show. I assumed it had come from a play, but obviously it must have come from the book.

[siobankelley]

Well if you're a Shakespeare fan, you can look at The Menaechmi by Plautus which is the precursor for COMEDY OF ERRORS. As for Jacobean, if you're looking for dark comedy and the occasional belly laugh both The Alchemist and Volpone are good. If you're looking for more black humor and some downright grim circumstances and behaviors, Middleton's THE CHANGELING and THE WHITE DEVIL also by Webster. Ford's 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE and Tourneur's THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY are also very, very darkly humored and violent. DR. FAUSTUS is very good, with less violence to recommend it. Seneca's play THYESTES seems to be the most likely source for Shakespeare's TITUS ANDRONICUS which, despite being written while Elizabeth was on the throne, can certainly hold its own next to any Jacobean tragedy. (Many insist that TITUS could not have been written by Shakespeare, but I promise you, having performed it, it plays like a house on fire and is actually very funny, darkly, but very funny in places. Especially when TITUS decides to cut off hand and send it to Saturninus as ransom for his son, and the other three characters in the scene get into a fight over whose hand should be sent and who should do the cutting off! VERY dark humor, but humor nonetheless. It was also an enormous box office hit in his day.) Also by Seneca MEDEA and PHAEDRA are well worth the whistle. In closing, I spent 46 years performing and directing/coaching and doing dramaturgy professionally with various Shakespeare Festivals. If you ever just want to shoot the breeze and chat about any of his works, I'd love to have somebody to engage in intelligent discourse with to comb my brain now that I'm retired and bored out of my mind.

[Danik 2016]

Chrysophase and siobankelley,
Is the Dr. Faustus play you are both referring to the one by Christopher Marlowe? As I am currently working on the German play it would interest me to know if there are other less known English plays about Dr. Faustus.