ABSTRACT
Senecan closet drama had become the favored form for the exploration of classical and biblical themes among classically educated writers of the Renaissance. The currency of the pseudo-Senecan Octavia encouraged the notion that it was an apt vehicle for commenting on contemporary political topics, though Renaissance dramatists prudently availed themselves of this opportunity only through allusion, inviting their readers to draw parallels that could always be repudiated. Aesthetically, the appeal of Senecan drama lay in its adherence to the classical unities of time, place, and action, a limited cast of characters, and a nuntius to narrate more lurid or less dignified offstage events. it also afforded ample opportunity for rhetorical copia, philosophical disquisition and debate. in terms of Marc Antoine, Anne Lake Prescott notably cautions “that if garnier’s plays are ‘closet drama’ the closets belonged to the worldly in their great houses, not just those reading Seneca in school or their university digs” (“Mary Sidney’s French Sophocles” 74). Without disputing the clearly Senecan character of Marc Antoine, Prescott highlights the 1585 prefatory materials that cast garnier less as a Seneca than as a classical greek dramatist, and Victor Skretowicz argues the stylistic affinities between garnier and Plutarch, his major source. Such philhellenism and its association with republican virtues would no doubt have made garnier’s drama even more attractive to a member of the Sidney family. The association of “closet drama” with privacy needs qualification, since two editions of Antonius were published in Mary Sidney’s lifetime, “without disclaimers, modesty topoi, or excuses, with her name prominently displayed on the title-page” (Clarke 154)—an unusual degree of publicity for either a woman writer or aristocrat.
