Physiologies of Mourning

Abstract

In one of his most intriguing stories, Plutarch tells us about a ruthless tyrant widely feared for his own violence who, when he saw violent spectacles on stage, was noted to shed bitter tears. In his Defence of Poesy, Philip Sidney has retold this story in order to illustrate the moving power of theatrical performance and to establish what he famously calls ‘the sweet violence of tragedy’ (1989, p. 230). His point concerns the interrelation between life and theatre. But clearly, Plutarch’s ‘abominable tyrant’, from whose eyes ‘a tragedy, well made and represented, drew abundance of tears’ though he was known to have ‘murdered infinite numbers’, raises complications. On the one hand, Sidney leaves out that this tyrant, weeping at the miseries of Hecuba, apparently himself felt so ashamed at his response that Plutarch reports he left the theatre at once (cf. Sidney, 1989, p. 381). On the other hand, Sidney leaves open what exactly his account is meant to prove: is the ‘sweetened’ violence of tragedy so irresistible because it forces violent spectators to mend their bloody ways or because it offers them occasion to display compassion as an ersatz for real change? The latter is suggested in Terry Eagleton’s blunt comment that ‘the case is no different from someone shedding tears over images of the down-and-out while creating mass unemployment in his own company.