ABSTRACT
In 1592, an impressive theatrical display akin to a drama festival was produced at Christ Church, Oxford. The three plays performed were composed by the jurist William Gager, and staged on consecutive nights: Ulysses Redux; Rivales; Panniculus Hippolyto Senecae Tragoediae Assutus. In layering the canonical work with fresh innovations, Gager makes conspicuous advertisement of his engagement with the Senecan tradition, positioning himself as a direct follower of Seneca's rhetorical methods. Through an examination of Phaedra's characterization people can see how Gager implements Seneca's rhetorical methods by inventing self-referential, set-piece speeches, sewn on as new layers on top of the character's existing literary heritage. Phaedra speaks not with the voice of a single character but that of a literary palimpsest. One of the key elements of Seneca's portrayal of Phaedra, to which see Gager providing a creative response, is her intriguingly disjointed sense of identity, which frees her to pick up and drop new guises at will.
