Literature and

history come.

Hello and Hello and welcome to literature in history. Episode 68, Love means Sin.

This program is on the play Phaedra, written by the Roman author Seneca the Younger, sometime

around the 40s or 50s, C.E. likely during the reigns of Claudius or Nero.

The exact chronology of Fadra's production and whether the play was ever staged at all during

Seneca's lifetime remain uncertain.

But we do know that this was one of the earliest pieces of classical theater to be staged during the European Renaissance,

perhaps the earliest of all.

In 1484, the play was performed at the St. George Palace in Wren, France.

The next year in 1485, Fadra premiered in Rome, an event that Scholar Emily Wilson describes as quote,

the starting point of early modern drama.

Close quote.

Ancient Roman plays appeared in Europe,

perhaps a century before ancient Greek plays did.

In the generation of Shakespeare, Marlow, Johnson, and Kid, in other words, the generation

that lived through the last few decades of the 1500s and into the 1600s,

Plotis and Seneca were the comedian and Tragedian from the ancient world to imitate, respectively, and contrastingly Aristophanes and Euripides remained

obscure stuff.

And as Seneca specifically began to re-emerge into European culture, European playwrights discovered a dark

and volatile style from the ancient world, one that never skimped on violence or lust or ostentatious rhetoric. As a play, however,

Fadra seems an unlikely peace to set in motion the more sensational and violent plays of the early modern period.

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