Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy: An Essay
Taken as a whole the translation is generally close, but not always correct. Difficult passages are rendered in a literal and often meaningless way, and sometimes slurred over or omitted altogether. Occasionally the translator expands a familiar re?ection, or inserts a few lines of his own. Jasper Heywood added a long soliloquy to the Thyestes, and made in the Troas a considerable number of alterations, which he details in the preface to that tragedy; his additions are affected to some extent by the tastes of his time, but are for the most part after the style of the original, the third Chorus in Heywood's Troas being borrowed from the third Chorus in Seneca's Hippolytus. There is an interesting insertion in the speech of Phaedra onfolio 73 (and sith that I by Studley, who also altered the first Chorus in the lliedea out of all semblance of translation, and added to the Agarnenmon a long speech by Eurybates. Studley also made omissions and additions of some interest in the Hercules Oetaeus. In Nevyle's Oedipus the first Chorus is considerably shortened, the second is left out altogether, and the third and fourth bear little or no resemblance to the original. Nevyle apologises for thus adding and subtracting at pleasure, and in the preface to the Troas Heywood excuses himself on the ground that the author's mind is in many places verye harde and doubtfnll, and the worke much corrupt by the default of euil printed Bookes. Doubtless everyone of the translators would be able to make with truth the avowal of the editor.
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