intro

1. Christopher Wren [1589 - 1658], the father of the architect, a Londoner and a product of the Merchant Taylor’s School, matriculated from St. John’s College, Oxford, in October 1608. He was admitted to the B. A. in 1609 and took his M. A. in 1613, and in later life became a protégé of the famed preacher Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, eventually becoming Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Order of the Garter. Physiponomachia is dedicated to the current President of his College, who demitted the position in 1611, and so must have been written and performed during this time-frame.

2. The play dramatizes the wrestling-match between Hercules and Achelous for the hand of Deianira, arranged by her father Oeneus, based loosely on Ovid’s version of the tale at Metamorphoses IX.1 - 88 (which may be read in Latin here, and in English translation here). I say “loosely” because Wren has introduced a number of changes. Some were dictated by dramatic necessity. In Ovid, Achelous repeatedly changes shapes while actually wrestling with Hercules (IX.62ff.):

Since this would be impossible to represent in the sight of the audience, all Wren could do is have Achelous momentarily leave the stage, don a set of horns, and reappear (384ff.). Also, to make the play more interesting, Wren added a number of secondary characters. Ovid’s bare statement is that Deianira was being courted by a multitude of suitors (IX.10, multorumque fuit spes invidiosa procorum, “[Deianira was] the jealous hope of many suitors.” Two of these suitors, Panopeus and Promelus, are introduced as characters in the play, and their importunate hounding of Oeneus provokes him to decree the decisive wrestling-match as a means of regaining his peace and quiet. This idea is not his, but is the suggestion of his second wife Perivia (186ff.). She is another invented character: mythology credits Oeneus with no consort but Althaea, who by the time of the action of the present play has committed suicide after serving as the instrument of Meleager’s ruin (none of this grim family history is mentioned, nor are we provided any hint of the tragic future in store for Hercules and Deianira). Deianira’s younger sister Gorge is not an invented character, and is mentioned in ancient literature as noted here. But her portrayal as a love-starved girl is Wren’s own. All these extra characters (to whom should be added Oeneus’ chamberlain Philarchus) allow Wren to embellish Ovid’s tale with a more complex plot and interesting complications.

3. But Wren’s most radical innovation is to employ his Prologue and Epilogue as a framing device to give the story a meaning entirely unanticipated by Ovid. The Prologue consists of a debate between Ponophilus (“Work-Lover”) and Anchinoeus (“Ingenious”) over the relative merits of labor and wit, the latter to be understood in the contemporary sense of the word, encompassing intelligence, native talent, and inventiveness. This strongly recalls a similar debate about the relative merits of native talent and acquired art in antiquity, best expressed by Horace, Ars Poetica 408ff. (Horace acknowledges that both are needed for a successful poem, but stresses that a successful poet must acquire art by hard work). This debate therefore presses Ovid’s story into service as an allegory, and the allegorical nature of the wrestling-match is underscored by the fact that in the Prologue we are informed that the two actors who play Ponophilus and Anchinoeus will reappear in the roles of Hercules and Achelous, respectively (27f.). Thus, when Achelous fails to defeat Hercules in an a fair fight, acquires his horns (which is regarded with distaste by the spectators as an unfair trick), and is soundly defeated anyway, the superiority of hard effort to mere cleverness is demonstrated. It will be noticed, incidentally, that, in Ovid, Hercules tries his own dirty trick, picking up a handful of dust and throwing it in Achelous’ eyes (Met. IX.35), which Wren suppresses because it would sabotage the point he is trying to make.

4. In what is evidently the only thoughtful review of the play ever written, Hans-Jürgen Weckermann wrote:

The author can be credited with having furnished his play with a clear structure and the story he found with an explicit allegorical theme, which is represented in the frame by the rivalry of Labour and Ingenuity and embodied in the play in the struggle between the strong Hercules and the crafty Achelous. In some places, however, the underlying structure rather obtrudes itself upon the reader’s attention, as when the first four scenes somewhat clumsily give the exposition of the plot and by turns introduce most of the characters, or when almost the sole function of scenes 8 and 9 consists in delaying the expected ending. Plot management does not seem to have been one of Wren’s strong points. The possibilities for a little intrigue or revenge inherent in the repudiated suitors’ decision to attend the wedding ceremonies in disguise are almost completely neglected, and something similar can be said about Gorge’s unreturned love for Achelous which, though twice hinted at in scene 7, ends somewhat abruptly and inconclusively with her stoic resignation to her fate and the expectation of future suitors.

While there is some undeniable truth in these observations, Wren can be cleared of at least some of these charges by considering Physiponomachia within the context of four other comedies written and produced at St. John’s College. These are Philip Parson’s Atalanta (1612), Thomas Atkinson’s Homo (1615 - 21), Henry Bellamy’s Iphis (ca. 1623), Joseph Crowder’s Cephalus et Procris (1626 - 28), and Philip Parson’s Atalanta (1612). NOTE 1 There are a number of common denominators linking these plays with Physiponomachia. With the exception of Atkinson’s Homo, each dramatizes an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Each is preceded by an epistle in prose or verse dedicating the play to the current President of St. John’s College, and is preserved in what looks like a presentation copy executed by a professional scrivener. And, to varying degrees, each is a short play: Homo — 580 lines; Iphis — 1150 lines; Cephalus et Procris — 1193 lines; Atalanta — 723 lines; Physiponomachia — 585 lines. NOTE 2 Academic plays often run to 2000 lines or more, and contain song, dance, and some of them contain extended bits of stage-business that would substantially protract the performance time, so by contemporary standards even the longest of these plays is remarkably brief. It would seem that there was some performance occasion at St. John’s College for which short plays were required (or, perhaps, this college had a habit of double-billing its dramatic performances). NOTE 3 Evidently in St. John’s College it was considered good form for the author to submit a presentation copy to the President. In connection with Cephalus et Procris the suggestion has been made that the task of writing the play was demanded of its author by the President of the College, and something like the same suggestion might be extended to all these plays, that the composition of a play, normally based on the Metamorphoses, was a traditional set task at St. John’s, probably both as an educational exercise and as a means of producing the scripts necessary to maintain the college’s dramatic life. And when seen in the larger context of these other plays, the extreme brevity of Physiponomachia takes on a different aspect. Wren’s failure to develop such side-issues as the resentment of the foiled suitors and Gorge’s unrequited love for Achelous, is more understandable, as he seems to have been required to turn out a short play. It would be unfair to accuse him of dramaturgic incompetence; given the restraints under which he appears to have been working, it is possible to entertain a fairly high degree of respect for his craftsmanship.

5. Physiponomachia is preserved in the singule manuscript Bodleian Library ms. 30, which is available in a published photographic reproduction. NOTE 4 Its ruled side margins, the formality of its title page, dramatis personae list, and capitals, as well as the neat regularity of its hand, show that it was a presentation manuscript, presumably meant for President Buckridge. Since the manuscripts of these plays are so similar=, one is tempted to think the college library maintained a collection of such plays. If so, the collection was subsequently broken up, perhaps during the Civil War, since today only the ms. of Cephalus et Procris remains in the St. John’s College library, the other four being variously owned by the British and Bodleian Libraries. The number of mistakes show that the ms. was not executed by Wren himself, and it is more likely the work of a professional scrivener. Either the scrivener was given a remarkably imperfect text to work from, or more likely he himself he knew little if any Latin (this is particularly suggested by the silly botch made of 256f., which has the effect of placing Hercules’ hand atop his torso). After these mistakes are removed from the text, Wren may be seen to have been a highly competent Latinist. Like the other plays in this series, Physiponomachia is written in genuine iambic senarii, not the mock-verses frequently used to make academic comedies look on paper like the comedies of Plautus and Terence. It is no doubt for this reason that the play is more replete with echoes and borrowings from the Senecan corpus (understandably, from the two Hercules plays in particular) rather than from the Roman comic poets.

NOTE 1 An edition of Bellamy’s Iphis is already available in the Philological Museum. The mss. of that play and of Crowther’s Cephalus et Procris are photographically reproduced in Henry Bellamy, Iphis (?acted 1621 - 1633), Joseph Crowther, Cephalus et Procris (acted 1626 - 28), Prepared with an Introduction by Bernfried Nugel (Renaissance Latin Drama in England series I.10, Hildesheim - New York, 1982). The other two plays have been edited by William E. Mahaney and Walter K. Sherwin, with English translations by Walter K. Sherwin, Jay Freyman, and Even Parrish, Two University Latin Plays: Philip Parson’s Atalanta and Thomas Atkinson’s Homo (Salzburg Studies in English Literature vol. 16, Salzburg, 1973). This edition unaccountably omits the dedicatory epistle (addressed to President William Laud) and Prologue of Homo.

NOTE 2 The lineation employed for photographic reproductions of mss. in the Renaissance Latin Drama in England series appears to have been applied mechanically, is only approximate, and in many cases tends to exaggerate the number lines in a play. The figures given here, therefore, disagree with those given in the various relevant volumes of that series.

NOTE 3 The dedication of Atalanta offers the play to President William Laud as a New Year’s gift, which suggests that this play, at least, was performed as part of St. John’s College’s Christmas festivities.

NOTE 4 Christopher Wren, Physiponomachia (acted 1609 - 1611), Philip Parsons, Atalanta (acted 1612), Thomas Atkinson, Homo (Acted 1615 - 1621), Prepared with an Introduction by Hans - Jürgen Weckermann (Renaissance Drama in England series I.4, Hildesheim - New York, 1981). Weckermann discusses Wren and his play on pp. 5 - 10 and bibliographical references on p. 23.