"Antike Roman": Power Symbology and the Roman Play in Early Modern England, 1585-1635 by Clifford Ronan (review)

438Comparative Drama canonic melodrama (which represents the hegemonic power) are not only dispirited but fake, since they do not truly question the status quo. Nonetheless, Rios-Font's systematic analysis ofthe drama ofnineteenth century Spain and its comparison to the developing canon proves a useful resource to the study of the period. Worry as we may tJiat RiosFont 's initial setting of the boundaries of melodrama is not all that it purports to be, the fact remains that the analysis of these plays' observance of and divergence from the "norm" is exhaustive enough to allow the reader to decide. ELENA GARCIA-MARTIN University of South Florida Clifford Ronan. "Antike Roman ": Power Symbology and the Roman Play in Early Modern England, 1585-1635. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Pp. xiii + 233. $50.00. Ronan juxtaposes the terms "Antike" and "antique" to characterize ambiguous English dramatic images ofRoman power in a period of expansion and conflict. The other side of Roman dignitas and constantia, he argues, sometimes includes garishness, savagery, or hollowness. In this study of forty-three Elizabethan and Jacobean dramas on Roman subjects, he illustrates the mixing of Roman and English symbols of power in history, art, and literature. His first major section, "Anachronism, Politics, and the Antike" clarifies pictorial and conceptual mixtures of ancient Rome and Early Modern Europe. Drawing from art and history, he points out simultaneous reminders of ancient and modern civil war, and he uses historical parallels and Bakhtinian chronotopes, "time places" that leap from ancient to present events or from locations once whole in Rome but present only in Renaissance ruins. For instance, Roman characters in drama of the period speak of future acts of revolution, while images from the republic and empire reappear in the Catholic Rome of architecture and the glosses of the Geneva Bible. Ronan's second major division, "Playing Stoics and Tyrant-Kings," provides a strong exploration of concepts which made Rome great but had the potential effect of leading a powerful empire toward destruction or even distortion of the human image. These include Nobilitas and Majestas: Munificence, Clemency, and Sensitivity to Slight; Suicide and the Dynamics ofStoical Constantia; Superbia: Insulting Aquiline, Overmounting Pride; Saevitia: Wolves, Demons, Parricides, and Self-Corrosion . The major virtues stressed in his discussion of nobilitas and majestas emphasize their accessibility to English leaders through merit rather than inheritance, viewing self-control as a valuable concomitant of power. Nor is their power confined to the battlefield. Ronan stresses its presence in law, philosophy, and the forensic arts. Nevertheless, the Reviews439 quality can be misused in excessive domination or fragmented by divided rule. In spite of the numerous negative or derisory qualities of staged suicide, Ronan stresses its increasingly popular portrayal in Elizabethan drama. Characters who die rather than submit to a dictator educate an audience in constantia. His connections ofemblems related to constancy as a virtue during the period are consistent with observations of other critics, such as Elizabeth McCutcheon, of Tudor neo-Stoicism. Carried too far, however, constantia becomes rock-like and insensitive. Another quality Ronan finds intensified in English drama is the dramatization of pride, especially in staged triumphs. Although he mentions many historic Elizabethan triumphal processions, he makes no judgment of their cruelty. In the Roman plays he does so, however, and establishes a series of "insultments" in which conquerors tread on their captives or spill human blood. He sensibly illustrates qualities ofappropriate superbia, evolving from Shakespeare's progression through the Henriad to Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. Beyond appropriate pride, Ronan asserts, Romans can aspire so high that they lose their humanity and become furies, snakes, and dragons. "Patriots slip into being actors (Caesar) or brigands (Antony) . . . and family defenders lose their pietas and change into parricides (Titus, Appius)" (125). These images are linked with growing suspicions of monarchical power, coupled with Protestant glosses ofRevelation beasts to recall persecutions of Papal Rome. He sees Coriolanus as most savage in its association of die hero with beasts, in the confused erotic and familial relationships, and the hero's brutal physical humiliation. The most valuable classical source for the powerful section on saevitia is Lucan. To my knowledge Ronan is the first...