you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

I started reading Corneille's Cinna, or The Clemency of Augustus yesterday, in translation, until they skipped a scene with the note that "this is always omitted in performance so we omit it here." So then I found an on-line version in French and finished it tonight in that. I'm pleased that I can still pretty much read French without a dictionary (maybe one word every 10 lines or so I had to look up to get the exact meaning). I also am very pleased with the play. Incidentally, the supposedly always-omitted scene was awesome: Augustus being whiny and angsty and Livia trying to talk sense into him. Actually, all of the men were pretty angsty and whiny, compared with the extremely sensibly Livie and extremely single-minded Émilie. There is probably something there in the background about different standards of intellectual activity/worry for different genders. I was struck by how reversed it is from what we tend to be told are "normal, maybe even biological" tendencies for men and women in terms of who agonizes and second-guesses and who is determined and strong-minded.

I think my translation may have been exceptionally crummy, because I started enjoying it so much more in the original, although that tends to happen. My memory of classical French drama had been that it was fairly static and not terribly interesting in terms of characters, but that was not the case here.


Finally, and maybe most of all, I was impressed, in the way that I shouldn't be anymore, but how nuanced Corneille's dealing with the whole Augustus issue. One expects it from Seneca (or does one? -- Well, in this case, one does, because Seneca is saying "EVEN Augustus, who was part of this horrible thing in his earlier days was merciful on the occasion of…"), but I have a bad habit of assuming that later generations, particularly if the are writing for Sun King, take Augustus at face value. Which is stupid, I know, and I shouldn't keep being surprised. But anyway, even though everything got kind of assimilated into an anachronistic divine-right happiness by the end, much of all the characters' speeches were quite ambivalent. Even Augustus was gripped by self-doubt ('though this is in Seneca, too): he was as much in need of the Augustan Myth as anyone else. I was going to comment that I was surprised at Livia's general sensibleness in this play -- not how she's usually written at all -- but then here she's the one who comes out and lays down the Divine Right law, promises the Golden Age, etc. In a way she's still completely in charge of everything that "Augustus" (as opposed to Octavian) means, which is v. appropriate.


On a completely different note, I got Miles in Love out, mainly to read "Winterfair Gifts." I think the cover art is getting worse as the series goes on: here M. is clearly taller than Ekaterin, and in spite of being several steps down the staircase from her! (I am not going to comment on the red latex gloves or the Star Wars costuming.)

That would be Hannah's, not Thomas'. Although I wish Thomas More had written a Regulus, because that would be pretty awesome.

I'm not sure why I am fixating on this right now, but tonight I read my second post-classical Regulus play. I know of at least one more (Crowne -- the introduction makes it out to be unbelievably bad, possibly worse that the Havard, so that should be exciting).

Hannah More based her play on either a play or a long poem of an Italian poet, so I don't know which plot elements can fairly be called hers, and which are borrowings. But basically, this play had most of what I wanted in Regulus fanfiction an expansion of the story: there were no Carthaginian secret agents, in fact there were no villains, and the one character (the consul Manlius, more on whom later) who is presented as slightly less than good, turns out to be the Second Most Virtuous Roman. The plot mostly focuses around Regulus' family: son Publius (historically, either Gaius or Marcus, but we'll let that pass), daughter Attilia, and protegé and now tribune Licinius. Most of the play is Regulus storming on about virtue, with Publius protesting that he can't abandon his filial duty (but: "are you a son, or are you a Roman?"), Attilia weeping and wailing, and Licinius telling himself that if they can just save Regulus, he'll thank them later. There is also a small love triangle between Publius, Attilia's Carthaginian slave Barce, and Hamilcar, the Carthaginin ambassador, and a sort of half-baked romance between Licinius and Attilia. And Manlius appears to hit on Regulus at one point, just to complete the romantic entanglements, but I assume that wasn't intentional on the part of the authoress.

More follows Horace, in general, more than Havard, and this a good thing. (I think Horace is the most extended classical version, but I should probably check Appian, or Dio, or something). For my purposes, this means there is a hilarious/thrilling scene in the senate when Regulus refuses to sit (can a slave sit in the presence of senators?), then Publius jumps up (can a son sit while his father stands?) and Regulus more or less tells him to sit down and shut up (and if you were really a good son, you'd obey me). I think that the promise of this sort of thing is why I am hunting down Regulus sources: open discussion of hierarchy in terms of who is sitting when. I admit that this has fascinated me at least since I connected us all standing up in elementary school orchestra concerts when the director walked, with all of those scenes of standing up: when the judge comes in, when the President comes in, when, in movies and plays, the king came in, and realized that it was the same thing. Then I wondered whether it was supposed to be as meaningless a gesture as I mentally treated it, or whether I was actually supposed to be feeling some sort of sense of inferior status and/or respect due. Then I started to obsess, and the rest, as they say, is history. In my case, the history of rather a lot of my thought.

But anyway, what I liked about More's treatment of Regulus was that it mostly wasn't about Regulus. It was more about all of the people around him as they variously Don't Get It, then, Get It But Wish They Didn't, and, eventually, Come to an Understanding of It.

That said, I had one major personal issue with this treatment:
African vs. Roman. Now, in general, I don't get that uncomfortable with Roman moral division between themselves and "Africans." There are political reasons (124 year war, for example, plus that unpleasantness with Cleopatra later), and cultural prejudices going on that I don't feel guilty about, because I can distance myself. The Romans can be pretty condescending/prone to rude stereotypes about the Greeks, the Persians (as are the Greeks, obviously), the Germans, and provincials of all types, including people from the 'wrong' parts of Italy. But when an Anglo-American (obviously, Hannah More is only the former, and I probably shouldn't take them together, England having a different (maybe less problematic) history of race than we do, but I'm not talking so much about slavery as about racial attitudes in general) makes a big deal about this, I do get uncomfortable. And I couldn't help but read more into "African" than "Roman generalization about people from Africa" when the two Carthaginian characters most profoundly, and, actually, alone of the characters, didn't get it. They admired the amazing virtue and honor of the Romans, but completely failed to understand it. There was a really iffy scene where the Carthaginian ambassador decides that he's going to show Regulus that Carthaginians have honor too, and so offers to let him escape. Regulus rants a refusal, of course, but the ambassador doesn't even get that he doesn't get it. Very awkward.

Three further observations:

1. About half way through, around the time when Regulus won his son over, I started to think about the division that seemed to be happening men Getting It and women Not Getting It. Obviously, women:emotion::men:reason, particularly with all the exhorting to repress ummanly passions that was going on. This was mostly confirmed when Attilia finally Gets It, although with much suffering and weeping, and makes the interesting claim that "Roman virgins should be better than women" i.e. not be weepy and wimpy. Again, clearly not original with More or her era, but nice to see a default vs. potential identity being applied. (On the other hand, what finally pushes Attilia into fortitude is her father's comment that since she can't do anything useful for the state, she can at least not embarrass him by making a scene.)

2. The more interesting division into Getting It and Not Getting it happened by class. By the end, we get a huge confrontation between the senators, led by Manlius, and the people, led by the still-misguided Licinius. The moral, as expounded by Regulus when he finally 'shames' the masses in acquiescence, is certainly "listen to your betters, damn it, because you're fools." And certainly, barring the Carthaginians, who never Get It, Licinius Gets It even later than Attilia, making patrician vs. plebeian possibly the more telling distinction. Except, of course, they are all Romans, and all basically committed to Doing the Right Thing. I should probably find out how (or whether) this is is relevant to Hannah More's politics, which I suspect it is, but I don't feel like it right now.

3. An amusing "hasn't language changed in 175 years moment" occurred when Manlius apostrophized Regulus as "thou awfully good Roman."

So. I think that's all for tonight.

Admittedly, I read it skimmingly.

1. Best line: "Gentle Achates, fetch the tinderbox." I suppose bronze-age peoples probably did use flint and tinder to make a fire, but even so.

2. Lesson learned: the whole damn thing could have been prevented if Aeneas had only taught his son not to take candy from strangers.

3. The end: it effectively counteracted any tragic sense induced by the introduction of Vergil's lines.