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Book Reviews 295 Curtis Perry, Shakespeare and Senecan Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. x + 296 pp. Curtis Perry’s well-written and innovative study “seeks to recover the ways that Shakespeare, in his tragedies, engaged with the inherited resources of Senecan tragedy” (1). Its opening sentence deftly foretells the book’s agenda in the three operative words “recover,” “engaged,” and “inherited.” The first suggests that scholarship has neglected resources that have always been available. The second describes how early moderns were educated to work with their ancient forebears and make them their own. The third implies that Shakespeare himself was hardly the first to utilize “inherited” and, perhaps, inherent dramatic genetics from the one ancient playwright who was easily available to sixteenth-century readers in his classical language, Latin, or in translation. That I have lingered over Perry’s diction can be considered an endorsement of his skills as a writer. And, as one who has himself published on Seneca, I would posit that Shakespeare and Senecan Tragedy is innovative, indeed. Perry is certainly not the first to write about Seneca in sixteenth-century European literature, with special emphasis on Shakespeare, but his work is probably the most significant for the twenty-first century.
Ben Jonson Journal – Edinburgh University Press
Published: Nov 1, 2022
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