A meta-dramatic reading of Furia in Seneca's Thyestes

What is it about?

The opening Act of Seneca’s Thyestes dramatizes the construction of a broader play within a play on the demise of the house of Tantalus, in which Furia is a meta-poet. The narrow plot in Thyestes proper, where Atreus appears as both instigator and inset poet, dramatizes only one aspect of the broader drama by Furia, thus functioning as an illustration of how everything foretold in her speech will come to pass. The open-ended closure of the narrower play with its reference to Thyestes’ prayer to the avenging gods brings to mind the theme of continuing revenge within the family, as outlined by Furia. This dialogical interaction between the beginning and end of Thyestes allows the audience to prefigure that Atreus will not be the eventual champion of tragic plot, as he arrogantly asserts at the play’s end, but that revenge will continue in the next generation of the same house, exactly as foreshadowed in the opening Act.

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Why is it important?

The article considerably widens our notions of meta-drama in the play as it envisages Furia as an inset-poet constructing a play within a play, broader in scope than the action of Thyestes' own plot.

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