Hannibal and Scipio is a Caroline era stage play, a classical tragedy

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 written by Thomas Nabbes

Thomas Nabbes

Thomas Nabbes was an English dramatist.He was born in humble circumstances in Worcestershire, and educated at Exeter College, Oxford in 1621...

. The play was first performed in 1635

1635 in literature

The year 1635 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*February 22 - In Paris, the Académie française is founded.*May 6 - The King's Men perform Othello at the Blackfriars Theatre.*Birth of René Descartes' daughter, Francine....

 by Queen Henrietta's Men

Queen Henrietta's Men

Queen Henrietta's Men was an important playing company or troupe of actors in Caroline era London. At their peak of popularity, Queen Henrietta's Men were the second leading troupe of the day, after only the King's Men.-Beginnings:...

, and was first published in 1637

1637 in literature

The year 1637 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 24 - Hamlet is performed before King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria at Hampton Court Palace....

. The first edition of the play contained a cast list of the original production, making the 1637 quarto

Book size

The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...

 an important information source on English Renaissance theatre

English Renaissance theatre

English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...

.

Literary connections

As its title indicates, the play relates the historical rivalry between Hannibal and Scipio Africanus

Scipio Africanus

Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus , also known as Scipio Africanus and Scipio the Elder, was a general in the Second Punic War and statesman of the Roman Republic...

. Out of the vast array of historical source material on the subject, Nabbes relied primarily upon the account of the Second Punic War

Second Punic War

The Second Punic War, also referred to as The Hannibalic War and The War Against Hannibal, lasted from 218 to 201 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean. This was the second major war between Carthage and the Roman Republic, with the participation of the Berbers on...

 given by Livy

Livy

Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

 in his history of Rome, Ab Urbe condita

Ab urbe condita

Ab urbe condita is Latin for "from the founding of the City ", traditionally set in 753 BC. AUC is a year-numbering system used by some ancient Roman historians to identify particular Roman years...

, and upon Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

's Lives of Hannibal and Scipio.

Earlier English plays on the subject had been written and acted. A Scipio Africanus, author unknown, was staged at the English Court on January 3, 1580

1580 in literature

-Events:*Thomas Legge's Latin play about Richard III, Richardus Tertius, is acted by students at St John's College, Cambridge during March.-New books:*Book of Concord*Jean Bodin - De la demonomanie des sorciers*John Lyly - Euphues and his England...

; a Hannibal and Hermes by Thomas Dekker, Michael Drayton

Michael Drayton

Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...

, and Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson (dramatist)

Robert Wilson , was an Elizabethan dramatist who worked primarily in the 1580s and 1590s. He is also believed to have been an actor who specialized in clown roles....

 dated from 1598; it was followed by a Hannibal and Scipio by Richard Hathwaye

Richard Hathwaye

Richard Hathwaye , was an English dramatist. Little is known about Hathwaye's life. There is no evidence that he was related to his namesake Richard Hathaway, the father of Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway. Hathwaye is not heard of after 1603....

 and William Rankins in 1601. (None of these works is extant.) John Marston

John Marston

John Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...

's The Wonder of Women

The Wonder of Women

The Wonder of Women, or The Tragedy of Sophonisba is an early Jacobean stage play written by the satiric dramatist John Marston. It was first performed by the Children of the Revels, one of the troupes of boy actors popular at the time, in the Blackfriars Theatre.The play was entered into the...

(1606

1606 in literature

The year 1606 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*May 27 - The English Parliament passes An Act to Restrain Abuses of Players, which tightens the censorship controls on public theatre performances, most notably on the question of profane oaths.*December 26 - Shakespeare's King...

) deals with the related figure of Sophonisba

Sophonisba

Sophonisba was a Carthaginian noblewoman who lived during the Second Punic War, and the daughter of Hasdrubal Gisco Gisgonis...

.

In the Prologue to his play, Nabbes writes of "borrowing from a former play" (line 190), but scholars have not agreed on any specific play to which he refers. Nabbes apparently intended to deny any debt to any previously-produced drama.

Beyond the range of English literature, a large body of Continental plays, poems, and prose stories dealt with the subject matter; the last category includes versions of the story by Bandello, Boccaccio, and Petrarch

Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...

.

The 1635 cast

The cast list in the 1637 quarto of Hannibal and Scipio is one of only five such lists that have survived from the 1625–42 history of Queen Henrietta's Men. (The others are for The Fair Maid of the West

The Fair Maid of the West

The Fair Maid of the West, or a Girl Worth Gold, Parts 1 and 2 is a work of English Renaissance drama, a two-part play written by Thomas Heywood that was first published in 1631.-Date:...

, King John and Matilda

King John and Matilda

King John and Matilda is a Caroline era stage play, a historical tragedy written by Robert Davenport. It was initially published in 1655; the cast list included in the first edition is provides valuable information on some of the actors of English Renaissance theatre.-Performance and publication:No...

, The Renegado

The Renegado

The Renegado, or The Gentleman of Venice is a late Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy written by Philip Massinger and first published in 1630...

, and The Wedding

The Wedding (1629 play)

The Wedding is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by James Shirley. Published in 1629, it was the first of Shirley's plays to appear in print. An early comedy of manners, it is set in the fashionable world of genteel London society in Shirley's day....

.) The role assignments for Hannibal and Scipio, what the list itself calls "The speaking persons," are:

Actor	Role(s)
William Allen William Allen (actor) William Allen was a prominent English actor in the Caroline era. He belonged to both of the most important theatre companies of his generation, Queen Henrietta's Men and the King's Men....	Hannibal
Michael Bowyer Michael Bowyer Michael Bowyer was an actor in English Renaissance theatre in the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He spent most of his maturity with Queen Henrietta's Men, but finished his career with the King's Men...	Scipio
Richard Perkins Richard Perkins (17th-century actor) Richard Perkins was a prominent early seventeenth-century actor, most famous for his performance in the role of Barabas in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta...	Hanno
Theophilus Bird Theophilus Bird Theophilus Bird, or Bourne, was a seventeenth-century English actor. Bird began his stage career in the Stuart era of English Renaissance theatre, and ended it in the Restoration period; he was one of the relatively few actors who managed to resume their careers after the eighteen-year enforced...	Masinissa
Ezekiel Fenn	Sophonisba
John Page	Lelius
John Sumner John Sumner (17th-century actor) John Sumner was an English theatre actor during the Caroline era .-Career:He was a long-time member of the Queen Henrietta's Men, one of the prime playing companies or acting troupes of the time and named for Henrietta Maria of France, the queen consort of England, Scotland and Ireland as the wife...	Himulco
Robert Axell	Gisgon; Bomilcar
Hugh Clark Hugh Clark Hugh Clark was a prominent English actor of the Caroline era. He worked in both of the main theatre companies of his time, Queen Henrietta's Men and the King's Men....	Syphax; Nuntius
William Shearlock	Maharaball; Prusias
Anthony Turner Anthony Turner Anthony Turner was a noted English actor in the Caroline era. For most of his career he worked with Queen Henrietta's Men, one of the leading theatre companies of the time....	Crates; Piston; Messenger
George Stutfield	Lucius; Bostar; Soldier

Structure and theme

Nabbes structures his play so that each of the five Acts has a different setting — Capua

Capua

Capua is a city and comune in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, situated 25 km north of Naples, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain. Ancient Capua was situated where Santa Maria Capua Vetere is now...

; Syphax's court; Utica

Utica, Tunisia

Utica is an ancient city northwest of Carthage near the outflow of the Medjerda River into the Mediterranean Sea, traditionally considered to be the first colony founded by the Phoenicians in North Africa...

; Carthage

Carthage

Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

; and Bithynia

Bithynia

Bithynia was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor, adjoining the Propontis, the Thracian Bosporus and the Euxine .-Description:...

. "Nabbes organizes events...in order to present a series of contrasts — between Hannibal and Scipio, Syphax and Masinissa, continence and lust, public duty and private passion — which constitute variations on his main theme of the nature of human virtue." Through this pattern of contrasts, Nabbes constructs "a play with two protagonists, one tragic and one epic;" when Hannibal dies, Scipio is forced to realize the limits of his quest for military glory and turn toward the "contemplative virtues" of philosophy. Nabbes's play anticipated the heroic drama

Heroic drama

Heroic drama is a type of play popular during the Restoration era in England, distinguished by both its verse structure and its subject matter. The sub-genre of heroic drama evolved through several works of the middle to later 1660s; John Dryden's The Indian Emperour and Roger Boyle's The Black...

 to come during the Restoration

English Restoration

The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

, though the heroic play "lacks both Nabbes's formal restraint and his Neoplatonic philosophy."

Nabbes's preoccupations in the play are philosophical and moral; he did not attempt to apply a political slant to the work, to comment on the contemporary political scene of his day. Later writers would not exercise the same restraint. In the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the Punic Wars would become the preferred metaphor for the prevailing political situation; in England, the long-standing competition with France was analogized in Punic-War terms — with England as victorious Rome. The great critic Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

would eventually complain that he was sick of hearing about the subject; "he would be rude to anyone who mentioned the Punic Wars...."