Erica Bexley's monograph stakes new ground in the study of Seneca's tragedies by returning to one of the basics of all drama — the characters of the play. But this is no stale return to Aristotle's Poetics or even T.S. Eliot's maxim: ‘In the plays of Seneca, the drama is all in the word, and the word has no further reality behind it. His characters all seem to speak with the same voice, and at the top of it; they recite in turn’ (The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition, Volume 3 (2015), 196). On the contrary, B. expertly synthesises much of the recent scholarship on Senecan tragedy — from Bartsch and Star on Stoicism to Schiesaro and Littlewood on intertextuality and metatheater — but always with an eye to the literary creation of the characters and their reified ‘life’ as implied human beings. She strongly believes that character analysis has been underrepresented in much of Senecan scholarship, despite the vivid dramatis personae of the plays, and aims to correct that trend. The work consists of a short introduction that highlights her holistic approach to Seneca (i.e. she will take into consideration his philosophical works as well), four chapters on coherence, exemplarity, appearance and autonomy respectively, and concludes with a poignant afterword.
The first chapter focuses on the characters of Medea and Atreus and the way in which their consistent behaviour challenges many Stoic ideas about character and redefines tragic anagnorisis. Recognition scenes in Medea and Thyestes highlight how wickedness befits both Medea and Atreus and is part of their being ‘in character’. When the internal (and external) audiences realise who Medea and Atreus actually are, one can observe that the interplay between these fictional creations and real human behaviour may blur. B. teases out how this could lend a Stoic colouring to both characters and, intriguingly, how possible comparisons with Roman comedy would add to the meaning of these scenes. Both Medea and Atreus enjoy looking at themselves as exempla and take additional mythological tales (e.g. Tereus and Procne in Thyestes) as paradigms for their actions. The second chapter discusses such exempla in more detail with Troades and Hercules Furens as the primary texts under the microscope. Troades features characters struggling to act like their fathers (both Pyrrhus and Astyanax) and B. underscores how such an inherited paradigm influences their actions and self-conception. There is a strait-jacket effect when paternal exempla such as Achilles and Hector loom over their sons and B. shows how their mindset and actions recall larger Roman ideas of exemplarity. Might there be something tragic in this? I believe more could be done investigating the female characters of the play from this angle, including the chorus (who seem to be well aware what ‘Trojan Women’ in tragedies are supposed to do), and Ulysses himself who has to summon ‘all Ulysses’ (totum Ulixem, 614) to uncover Andromache's subterfuge. In Hercules Furens, Hercules attempts self-aemulatio as well, but doing so leads to actions that could be considered tyrannical and dangerous for himself and his loved ones. In a subtle and convincing analysis, B. concludes that Lycus becomes the most important analogue for Hercules: ‘this is the mirror in which Seneca reflects the danger of Hercules’ detached, self-reflexive exemplum’ (179).
The third chapter continues to probe the significance of character through their appearance. B. frames her argument by delving into ancient physiognomy and the way that external physical appearance can indicate one's internal emotional or ethical state. In his prose and tragedies, Seneca is a master of physical descriptions (e.g. de Ira 1.1.3–5, Phaed. 362ff.), and B. considers the way his portrayal of Phaedra and Hippolytus ‘articulate a complex relationship between exterior and interior manifestations of selfhood’ (205). In fact, their inner psychological turmoil will end up destroying any beautiful facies, and B. finds that the body of Hippolytus becomes more of a textual artifact than human body — more a literary corpus than a literal corpse. The literary nature of the character of Oedipus concludes the chapter, where B. finds him, especially his body, an object of other's knowledge, and not a fully fleshed-out subject in his own right. If Oedipus seems trapped by his fate and only able to assert himself in his self-blinding, the question of his autonomy can be seen as vital for his character. Autonomy, through self-definition and self-assertion, is the subject of the final chapter and B. highlights how it plays out in three areas: freedom, revenge and suicide. For B., the isolated solipsism of Hippolytus may extend the Stoic idea of independence and other strong-willed Senecan protagonists may resemble the sapiens, however darkly. This is a strong chapter, and it allows B. to return to Medea and Thyestes and offer important concluding thoughts about these plays as revenge tragedies.
In conclusion, B.'s thorough scrutiny of the characters provides moments of startling truth and reflection, particularly when she considers them in tandem with Seneca's Stoic works. At times, however, I felt that the chapters could have benefited from ‘zooming-out’ to articulate what really was tragic about Phaedra or Troades, or how the missing sections of the play (chiefly, the choral odes) amplify or question the findings B. makes about the characters. Nevertheless, B. makes a compelling case for such character analysis in Senecan tragedy and her findings will be important for future study of these plays.
