Abstract
Ben Jonson has featured little in the turn towards the emotions in early modern studies in which Shakespeare has been so prominent. Yet, this essay argues, Jonson’s Roman tragedy Sejanus shares with Hamlet a concern with the concealment of emotion and its political consequences. What underlies that concern in Jonson’s play is his reading of Seneca, particularly the tragedy Medea. Bringing Hamlet into this intertextual nexus draws our attention to a subtle, integrated strand of Senecan thought in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Reconfiguring the largely discredited but still influential opposition of Shakespeare and Jonson, this essay argues that Shakespeare’s classicism may be more pervasive and Jonson’s interest in the emotions more profound than comparisons between the two writers have tended to recognise.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Barkan, Leonard. The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986.
Bate, Jonathan. Shakespeare and Ovid. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Bowers, Cynthia. ‘“I Will Write Satires Still in Spite of Fear”: History, Satire and Free Speech in Jonson’s Poetaster and Sejanus’. Ben Jonson Journal 14 (2007): 153–172.
Braden, Gorden. ‘Tragedy’. In The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature: Volume II (1558–1600). Edited by Patrick Cheney and Philip Hardie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 373–394.
Burrow, Colin. ‘Shakespeare’. In The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature: Volume II (1558–1600). Edited by Patrick Cheney and Philip Hardie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 599–620.
Burrow, Colin, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Cain, Tom. ‘Jonson’s Humanist Tragedies’. In Ben Jonson and the Politics of Genre. Edited by A. D. Cousins and Alison V. Scott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 162–189.
Chetwynd, Ali. ‘“He That Lends You Pity Is Not Wise”: Rereading Sejanus for Pity and Terror’. Ben Jonson Journal 14 (2007): 43–60.
Cummings, Brian, and Freya Sierhuis (eds.). Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Donaldson, Ian. ‘“Misconstruing Everything”: Julius Caesar and Sejanus’. In Shakespeare Performed: Essays in Honor of R. A. Foakes. Edited by Grace Ioppolo. London: Associated University Presses, 2000, 88–107.
Dutton, A. Richard. ‘The Sources, Text, and Readers of Sejanus: Jonson’s “Integrity in the Story”’. Studies in Philology 75 (1978): 181–198.
Enterline, Lynn. Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
Evans, Robert C. ‘Jonson’s Copy of Seneca’. Comparative Drama 25 (1991): 257–292.
Geng, Penelope. ‘“He Only Talks”: Arruntius and the Formation of Interpretive Communities in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus’. Ben Jonson Journal 18 (2011): 126–140.
Hadfield, Andrew. ‘Jonson and Shakespeare in an Age of Lying’. Ben Jonson Journal 23 (2016): 52–74.
Heavey, Katherine. The Early Modern Medea: Medea in English Literature, 1558–1688. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Hunt, Maurice. ‘Jonson vs. Shakespeare: The Roman Plays’. Ben Jonson Journal 23 (2016): 75–100.
Jonson, Benjamin. Sejanus. Edited by Philip J. Ayers. Revels Plays Companion Library. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.
Jonson, Benjamin. Ben Jonson. Edited by C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson. 11 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925–1952.
Jonson, Benjamin. Sejanus. Edited by Tom Cain. In The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson. Volume 2. General editors: David Bevington, Martin Butler and Ian Donaldson. 7 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Jonson, Benjamin. The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. London: William Stansby, 1616. Huntington Library. Shelfmark: 606579, 361.
Kraye, Jill. ‘Stoicism in the Renaissance from Petrarch to Lipsius’. Grotiana 22 (2001): 21–45.
Lake, Peter. ‘From Leicester His Commonwealth to Sejanus His Fall: Ben Jonson and the Politics of Roman (Catholic) Virtue’. In Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation’: Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England. Edited by Ethan H. Shagan. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005, 128–161.
Lee, John. ‘Shakespeare, Human Nature and English Literature’. Shakespeare 5 (2009): 177–190.
Loxley, James and Fionnuala O’Neill Tonning. ‘Significant Others: On the Comparison of Shakespeare and Jonson’. Shakespeare 12 (2016): 335–337.
Martindale, Charles, and A. B. Taylor (eds.). Shakespeare and the Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Meek, Richard, and Erin Sullivan (eds.). The Renaissance of Emotion: Understanding Affect in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.
Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The Influence of Seneca. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Mullaney, Steven. The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Oxford English Dictionary Online. June 2017. Oxford University Press. www.oed.com.
Parker, Patricia. ‘Othello and Hamlet: Dilation, Spying and the Secret Place of Women’. In Shakespeare Reread: The Texts in New Contexts. Edited by Russ McDonald. New York: Cornell University Press, 1994, 105–146.
Pechter, Edward. ‘Julius Caesar and Sejanus: Roman Politics, Inner Selves and the Powers of the Theatre’. In Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Essays in Comparison. Edited by E. A. J. Honigmann. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986, 60–78.
Perry, Curtis. ‘Seneca and the Modernity of Hamlet’. Illinois Classical Studies 40 (2015): 407–429.
Prince, Kathryn. ‘Drama’. In Early Modern Emotions: An Introduction. Edited by Susan Broomhall. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017, 92–94.
Riddell, James. ‘Seventeenth-Century Identifications of Jonson’s Sources in the Classics’. Renaissance Quarterly 28 (1975): 204–218.
Riggs, David. ‘Ben Jonson’. In The Shakespeare Circle: An Alternative Biography. Edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 186–198.
Salmon, J. H. M. ‘Seneca and Tacitus in Jacobean England’. In The Mental World of the Jacobean Court. Edited by Linda Levy Peck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 169–188.
Seneca. Seneca his Tenne Tragedies. Compiled by Thomas Newton. London, 1581.
Seneca, Seneca’s Tragedies. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. Loeb Classical Library. 2 vols. London: William Heinemann, 1917.
Seneca. Moral Essays. Translated by John W. Basore. Loeb Classical Library. 3 vols. London: William Heinemann, 1928.
Seneca. Six Tragedies. Translated by Emily Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Edited by Frank Kermode. London: Methuen, 1954.
Shakespeare, William. 2 Henry VI. Edited by Michael Hattaway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by Philip Edwards. Updated edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. Edited by Marvin Spevack. Updated edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Sullivan, Erin. ‘The Passions of Thomas Wright: Renaissance Emotion Across Body and Soul’. In The Renaissance of Emotion: Understanding Affect in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Edited by Richard Meek and Erin Sullivan. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, 25–44.
Tilmouth, Christopher. Passion’s Triumph Over Reason: A History of the Moral Imagination from Spenser to Rochester. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Winston, Jessica. ‘English Seneca: Heywood to Hamlet’. In The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature, 1485–1603. Edited by Mike Pincombe and Cathy Shrank. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 472–487.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rickard, J. (2019). ‘Each Subtlest Passion, with Her Source and Spring’: Hamlet, Sejanus and the Concealment of Emotion. In: Megna, P., Phillips, B., White, R.S. (eds) Hamlet and Emotions. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03795-6_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03795-6_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03794-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03795-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)