Troas

Jasper Heywood's translation of Seneca's Troas, completed in 1559, holds a significant place in the development of English drama. As the first English translation of one of Seneca's tragedies, it introduced Renaissance audiences to Roman Stoic themes, focusing on the suffering of the Trojan women after the city's fall. This work is essential in understanding the influence of Seneca on later Elizabethan revenge tragedies, as Heywood's translations were particularly noted for their intense emotional depth and moral reflections. Heywood's translation incorporated his own stylistic embellishments, inventions and alterations. He expanded certain scenes and included "free compositions," which deviated from Seneca's text to intensify the tragic tone and emphasize Stoic virtues such as endurance in suffering. His translations of Troas, as well as Thyestes and Hercules Furens, were later compiled into Seneca His Tenne Tragedies in 1581, a key text for the English Renaissance​. This work reflects the broader cultural and political concerns of the Tudor era, including the stoicism needed to endure the upheavals of the time, making it not only a literary achievement but also a commentary on contemporary societal issues.

Ahl, Frederick. 1986. Seneca: Three Tragedies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Boyle, A. J., and William H. Batstone. 2020. Seneca: Tragedy and the Reception of Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Coleman, Katherine. 2021. “Versifying the Senecan Chorus: Notes on Jasper Heywood’s Emulative Efforts in Troas.” Skene 2.1: 45-65.

Heywood, Jasper. 1581. Seneca His Ten Tragedies, Translated into English. Edited by Thomas Newton. London: Thomas Marsh.

Ker, James, and Jessica Winston, eds. 2012. Elizabethan Seneca: Three Tragedies and Selected Prose. London: Modern Humanities Research Association.

Ker, James. 2013. "A Note on Jasper Heywood’s ‘Free Compositions’ in Troas (1559)." Modern Philology 110.4: 564-75.

Kraye, Jill. 1996. “Jasper Heywood and the Tudor Translation of Seneca’s Troas.” Renaissance Studies 10.3: 319-338.

Miola, Robert S. 1992. Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The Influence of Seneca. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Winston, Jessica. 2006. "Seneca in Early Elizabethan England." Renaissance Quarterly 59.1: 29-58.

This edition of Jasper Heywood’s translation of Seneca’s tragedy (USTC No. 505645) is held at the British Library, Shelfmark: 238.l.27. It is in octavo and consists of 86 pages.

The frontispiece reads: 

THE SIXT TRAGEdie of the moſt graue and prudent author Lucius, Anneus, Seneca, entituled Troas with diuers and ſundrye addicions to the ſame. Newly ſet forth in Engliſhe by Jaſper Heywood ſtudent in Oxonforde. Anno domini. 1559. Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum ſolum.

Signatures in this edition go from Bi to Fiii. Signatures B, C, D and E, go from i to iiii, and are followed by four unnumbered pages. The book ends on the verso page of Fiii.