The publication in 1581 of an English translation of the Latin tragedies of the Roman philosopher, moralist, and playwright, Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE—65 CE) had a profound influence on the function and depiction of ghosts in Elizabethan theater. Drawing on a tradition of Greek tragedy dating back to Aeschylus (c. 525–455 BCE) and Euripides (480–406 BCE), Seneca deployed ghosts in the prologues of his plays Thyestes and Agamemnon. Due to their classical ancestry, the ghosts of the Senecan tragedies evaded the scrutiny of Protestant critics, who never considered them to be agents of papal propaganda in favor of the doctrine of purgatory. They were correct, for characters like the ghost of Tantalus in the first act of Seneca’s Thyestes had little in common with the Catholic ghosts of the Middle Ages. Doomed to perpetual hunger and thirst in dark Acheron for murdering his son Pelops and feeding him to the gods, Tantalus was compelled to return to the world of the living as the agent of a fury to infect his ancestral house with his loathsome presence and thereby incite his grandsons Atreus and Thyestes to violence, as they vied against one another for the throne of Argos.
Before the royal palace of Argos. The time is just before dawn.
[TANTALUS’S ghost enters from a trapdoor in the floor]
GHOST OF TANTALUS: Who, who has fetched me from my cursed seat in hell, where I was grasping for food that flees from my starving mouth? Who with malice in his heart shows to Tantalus once again these skies and the hateful mansions of the gods in heaven? Has some punishment been found that is worse than parching thirst amid pools of water? Worse than a hungry mouth always gaping for food? Am I to bear Sisyphus’s slippery rock on my shoulders? Will Ixion’s swiftly whirling wheel wrench my limbs? Will I suffer the punishment of Tityus, who lies stretched out in a vast cavern and feeds dark birds his mangled innards, growing back at night what they consume during the day, fresh fodder for those monstrous beasts when they return anew? To what new torture am I assigned?
O harsh judge of souls, whoever you are who dole out new punishments to the dead, invent some new form of torture, add it to your list! Devise something terrifying, something that would make the guardian of hell’s grim dungeon tremble, send shivers through gloomy Acheron, and cause even me to quake in fear. From my seed there arises a new brood that will outdo its ancestors in crime and make me look innocent. They will do what no one has dared to do before. [The FURY rises from the trapdoor behind TANTALUS] If there is any empty space left in the region reserved for the wicked, I will fill it. So long as Pelops’s line remains, Minos will never have rest.
FURY: [cracking a whip with menace] Go on, you damned ghost! Start tormenting your wicked family with madness! Make your descendants fight using every sort of crime and continually draw their swords in retaliation. Let there be no limit to their hatred, nor any shame. Let blinding rage incite their minds. Let parents’ madness linger and let their long cycle of crimes be passed on to their children. Allow them no time to feel resentment for an old crime—no, let a new crime always arise on its heels, and not just an eye for an eye, but while an old crime is avenged let the new one grow greater.
Haughty brothers will lose their kingdoms, then be recalled from exile to rule again. The destiny of their house will swing violently back and forth between short-lived kings; the powerful will become humble, the humble powerful. Fortune will carry the kingship on a constant wave of uncertainty. When god restores to their country those exiled because of their crimes, they will return only to commit more. Everyone else will hate them as much as they hate each other. In their anger they will consider nothing off limits: brother will fear brother, father son, son father. Children will suffer wicked deaths but be born out of even greater wickedness. A hostile wife will plot against her husband. But in this wicked house adultery will be the most trivial of crimes. Righteousness, Faith, Law—all will perish. Wars will be carried across the seas; every land will be irrigated by bloodshed. Lust will exult victoriously over the mighty leaders of nations. Not even heaven will be exempt from your wickedness! Why do stars still shine in heaven’s vault? Why do their flames still feel obliged to offer their splendor to the world? No! Let there be deep night! Let day retreat from the sky! Embroil your household! Summon Hatred, Slaughter, and Death! Fill the whole house with your contagion, fill it with the essence of Tantalus. Let the lofty columns and doors be festooned with lush laurel, and let a fire worthy of your advent blaze brightly. Let the Thracian crime be reenacted here—but in greater number.
Why is the uncle’s hand idle? Will he ever raise it? It is time: let fires be lit, cauldrons be brought to a boil, and flesh be cut into pieces and thrown in. Let blood stain the ancestral hearth and the feast be laid out. You, Tantalus, you will come to this feast, a guest of a crime all too familiar to you. I have given you a day of freedom; I release you from your hunger to attend this banquet. Break your fast, satisfy your ravenous appetite! Look on, while wine mixed with blood is drunk! [TANTALUS backs away, turns and runs] Have I found a meal which even you would flee? Stop! Where do you think you’re running off to?
GHOST OF TANTALUS: To the pools, the streams, the receding waters—even the fruit-laden tree that flees from my very lips! Please, I beg you, let me return to my dark prison cell! If you do not think that I suffer enough, then move me to a different river: let me be left in the middle of your stream, Phlegethon, surrounded by your fiery waters! Hear me, all of you who are sentenced to punishments doled out by the law of the Fates, you who lie within hollow caves and cower in fear of mountain walls threatening to collapse, you who are bound and tremble before the fierce maw of ravenous lions and the dread ranks of the Furies, and you who, already half-burned, try to hold off the onslaught of torches—hear the voice of Tantalus as he hurtles toward you! Trust me as one who knows: be thankful for the punishments you have! [To the FURY] When will you allow me to leave the world of the living?
FURY: After you have thrown your house into turmoil, after you have filled it with war and sword-lust, an evil to kings, and driven uncontrollable madness into their bestial hearts.
GHOST OF TANTALUS: I should endure punishments, not be one. Am I dispatched as some poisonous vapor from the earth’s fissures? Or some pestilence to spread a baleful plague among my people? Will I lead my grandchildren into unspeakable evil? [Holding up his hands] Great parent of the gods, and mine, too, however much it may shame you! Even though my tongue may be assessed a heavy penalty and tortured for speaking out, I will yet voice this warning, too: descendants of Tantalus, do not defile your hands with accursed slaughter or stain the altars with the bloodshed of mad revenge! I will stand my ground. I will thwart this crime. [The FURY rises up to her full height and threatens to lash TANTALUS] Why do you threaten me with lashes and terrorize me with writhing snakes, rekindling that hunger residing in my deepest marrow? It burns, how my heart burns with thirst, and the flames of hunger flare up inside my burning belly! [Relenting] I’ll comply.
FURY: [cracking her whip] Spread this, yes this madness throughout your house. Let your descendants be carried away, blinded by fury, and with hostility in their hearts thirst for each other’s blood. Ah, the whole house senses your entrance, shuddering mightily at your wicked touch. Good, you have done more than enough. Now go back to the caverns of hell and the streams you know so well. Already the grieving earth revolts beneath your feet. See how the springs disappear, driven back underground? How the riverbeds grow dry? How few clouds are borne along by the scorching winds? Look, all the trees wither, their fruits gone, their branches barren. The Isthmus, once echoing with the roar of neighboring waters, once dividing neighboring shoals with a slender slip of land, now stretches wide, the distant sounds of the opposing seas now but a murmur. Lerna’s spring has retreated into the ground. Inachus’s channels lie hidden. The Alpheus no longer issues forth its sacred waters. No part of Cithaeron’s peaks is white with fallen snow. Noble Argos fears the return of its primeval drought. Look! The Sun-god himself wonders whether he should pull on the reins and compel the day that is destined to perish to continue on its path!
[TANTALUS and the FURY leave through the trapdoor]